October 30, 2017

Horace Silver along with Art Blakey was the most important small group bandleader of the 50s and 60s. He employed the standard small group line-up of tenor saxophone, trumpet, piano, bass, and drums. His group was the training grounds for young players who went on to be major artists. In addition Horace was a prolific composer. All the compositions - words and music - on this album are by Horace. Horace had a very uplifting message, not found too often in the jazz world. It is well represented on this album. In addition there are some classic trumpet solos by Tom Harrell. Great solos by saxophonist Bob Berg also. This album is very accessible for the neophyte jazz listener.

His most successful album and well worth listening to in addition to this one was Song for My Father. He recorded frequently on Blue Note records which became the most successful jazz label of that era and is still going today. Horace's comping behind his soloists was fantastic and added energy to the solo. Many of his varied repertoire of songs, including "Doodlin'", "Peace", and "Sister Sadie", became jazz standards that are still widely played. His considerable legacy encompasses his influence on other pianists and composers, and the development of young jazz talents who appeared in his bands over the course of four decades.

The rest of the tunes on the album were composed by Benny Golson, one of the most prolific jazz composers. In his autobiography, Whisper Not: The Autobiography of Benny Golson, Benny relates how his composition Killer Joe was always played by Doc Severinsen and the Tonight Show Band every night when they went to commercial. This resulted in a check for $100. sent to Benny each time the tune was played. Benny is one of the most important figures in the jazz having composed numerous standards and played sax in some great groups. Later he gave up jazz for a career in Hollywood, but came back to it in later years. He currently is still playing.

13. Art Farmer - Modern Art

One of the best and most underrated trumpet players in jazz was Art Farmer. Together with Benny Golson he formed the Jazztet in 1959, the high water mark for jazz and influential and popular jazz albums like Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue", Dave Brubeck's "Time Out." and John Coltrane's "Giant Steps. Art was the most tasteful and musically literate of all the trumpet players of the 50s and 60s. The arrangements and consistency on this album are first rate. His playing is known for its lyricism, warmth of tone and sensitivity. Bill Evans, also know for these same qualities, accompanies Art and Benny on this album. The combined quality of professionalism and musicianship is outstanding.

Art came from a musical family. His mother played piano in the AME church. His identical twin, Addison, who is also on this album was a professional jazz bassist. Art grew up in Phoenix, AZ when the schools were segregated and no music lessons were available. He taught himself to read music and play the trumpet. In later years he used the more mellow sounding flugelhorn.

August 20, 2017

Intro to Jazz:101 can be found here. The next 5 most important and/or best selling jazz albums are the following.

#6 Dave Brubeck: Time Out

Like many or the greatest jazz albums, this one was also released in 1959. One of the best selling jazz albums, this album featured compositions based on unusual time signatures for jazz such as 9/8. Take Five, a tune by saxophonist Paul Desmond, became a popular hit and part of the basic jazz repertoire. Take Five was in 5/4 time signature. According to Desmond, "[Take Five] was never supposed to be a hit. It was supposed to be a Joe Morello drum solo."

Paul Desmond's real last name was Breitenfeld. Like composer Jimmy Van Heusen (Here's That Rainy Day), he picked a name out of a phone book he liked better. The Brubeck group exemplified the cool, west coast sound.

Dave Brubeck was the composer of In Your Own Sweet Way, a beautiful ballad that has become a jazz standard. Some of his other great albums are Dave Digs Disney and Gone With the Wind.

Dave was one of the first jazz artists to sense the potential of getting gigs at college and universities. His wife, Iola, was his booking agent, and together they made a great and successful team.

In 2005, Time Out was one of 50 recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry. It was also listed in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

Brubeck attended the College of the Pacific in Stockton, California. Later, Brubeck was nearly expelled when one of his professors discovered that he could not read music on sight. Several of his professors came forward, arguing that his ability to write counterpoint and harmony more than compensated, and demonstrated his familiarity with music notation. The college was still afraid that it would cause a scandal, and agreed to let Brubeck graduate only after he had promised never to teach piano.

In 1954, he was featured on the cover of Time, the second jazz musician to be so honored (the first was Louis Armstrong on February 21, 1949). Brubeck personally found this accolade embarrassing, since he considered Duke Ellington more deserving of it and was convinced that he had been favored for being Caucasian.

In 1958 African-American bassist Eugene Wright joined for the group's U.S. Department of State tour of Europe and Asia. Wright became a permanent member in 1959, making the "classic" Quartet's personnel complete. During the late 1950s and early 1960s Brubeck canceled several concerts because the club owners or hall managers continued to resist the idea of an integrated band on their stages. He also canceled a television appearance when he found out that the producers intended to keep Wright off-camera.

#7 Charles Mingus: Tijuana Moods

Charles Mingus was one of the major innovators of jazz. He was a bassist, composer and band leader. He played with many of the innovators of bebop including Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. A famous recording, Jazz at Massey Hall, included them, Bud Powell and Max Roach. There are several Mingus recordings that might have been included in the top ten. I chose Tijuana Moods because it's my favorite. Frequently mentioned also is the Mingus album, Mingus Ah Um, also recorded in the vintage year 1959, which includes the famous tunes Goodbye Pork Pie Hat and Fables of Faubus.

Another album from this period, The Clown, the title track of which features narration by humorist Jean Shepherd, was the first to feature drummer Dannie Richmond, who remained his preferred drummer until Mingus's death in 1979. The two men formed one of the most impressive and versatile rhythm sections in jazz. Both were accomplished performers seeking to stretch the boundaries of their music while staying true to its roots. When joined by pianist Jaki Byard, they were dubbed "The Almighty Three". The Clown is one of my favorite albums and is much underrated in my opinion. It includes one of Mingus' most beautiful compositions, Reincarnation of a Lovebird, dedicated to Charlie Parker.

Mingus was a controversial figure know for his temperamental outbursts. He often worked with a mid-sized ensemble (around 8–10 members) of rotating musicians known as the Jazz Workshop. Mingus broke new ground, constantly demanding that his musicians be able to explore and develop their perceptions on the spot. Those who joined the Workshop (or Sweatshops as they were colorfully dubbed by the musicians) included Pepper Adams, Jaki Byard, Booker Ervin, John Handy, Jimmy Knepper, Charles McPherson and Horace Parlan. Mingus shaped these musicians into a cohesive improvisational machine that in many ways anticipated free jazz. Some musicians dubbed the workshop a "university" for jazz.

In 1993 the Library of Congress acquired Mingus's collected papers—including scores, sound recordings, correspondence and photos—in what they described as "the most important acquisition of a manuscript collection relating to jazz in the Library's history".

Mingus wrote his autobiography, Beneath the Underdog, in which he recounted many, sometimes lurid, details of his life.

August 06, 2017

You can't understand what jazz is all about until you appreciate Charlie "Bird" Parker. He totally revolutionized jazz. There was jazz before Charlie Parker and jazz after Charlie Parker, but no one almost singlehandedly reconstructed the art form. The most important figure in 20th century music and art, Charlie Parker was one of the most creative people who ever lived and performed in the world's most creative art form despite the fact (or maybe because of it) that he was a junkie, an alcoholic and died at the age of 34 from failure of every major organ in his body.

In addition to being the most creative and best improvisor of all time, Charlie Parker was a great composer, something for which he has not been given the credit that he deserves. Compositions such as Anthropology, Confirmation, Donna Lee, Ornithology, Ko-Ko, Yardbird Suite and many more.

#2 Kind of Blue - Miles Davis

This is the best selling jazz album of all time. Miles, the Prince of Darkness, has assembled a fantastic group including Cannonball Adderley, John Coltrane and Bill Evans, all major players at the top of their form. Miles was always looking for something new, and this album represented a departure from the bebop of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. The music was based on simpler "modal" harmonies rather than the chord structures of bebop which at once made it more accessible to the public and more melodic. It was also easier to improvise on as the same scale was used for much of the tune.

Kind of Blue was easy to comprehend, easy to take either as music played by the greatest improvisors of the day or simply as background music at a dinner party. That's probably why it sold so well.

June 02, 2017

May 30, 2017

Holly Hofmann performed as the featured artist in a quartet led by her husband, Mike Wofford, at Pete Carlson's Golf & Tennis. (Photo: Submitted)

Hofmann, widely recognized as the best jazz flutist on the West Coast, if not the nation, appeared as a featured artist with her husband, piano great Mike Wofford, April 8 at Pete Carlson’s Golf & Tennis. Wofford certainly was the music director, listening astutely to bassist Marshall Hawkins' funky solos, finding just the right accompaniments and then evolving them into original arrangements for the entire quartet.

But Hofmann fronts the band like a lead guitarist in a rock band, and, even when it’s not her turn to shred, she has such a fun personality, she leads the entertainment.

That’s just a side benefit to what Hofmann can bring with her instruments, especially the difficult alto flute. Her engaging personality comes through in the C flute with great inventiveness, but, when she switches to the alto flute, it’s like picking out a bigger bat and being able to swing for the home run. She has the breath control to really swing, she also can express these deep emotions on ballads with a tone as full and penetrating as Bing Crosby’s classic baritone from the 1930s.

Hofmann and several of the other featured artists on Pete Carlson’s Jazz for Jazz Lovers Series drew big crowds at the Annenberg Theater in the late 1990s and early 2000s. If the Palm Springs Art Museum wants to bring instrumental jazz back to that theater, Hofmann and Wofford – or Wofford and Hofmann – would be a good place to start.

June 03, 2016

Friday, May 27, Lori Bell had one of her long standing gigs at the La Jolla Community Center with Mike Garson, piano, and Ron Satterfield, guitar and vocals. Amiable and buoyant, Lorie established good rapport with the packed audience. She's the kind of person you wish you had for a classmate when you were going to school. The music was excellent with stellar performances from Ron Satterfield, a major talent, and Mike Garson, former pianist with David Bowie. That being said this review will be packed with anecdotes like the time Lorie gave piano lessons to my granddaughter, Monique. She was so good with her and a wonderful teacher.

Lorie has a new CD out, Brooklyn Dreaming, which has gotten rave reviews. Brian Zimmerman, writing in downbeat gave the album 4 stars and said this:

West Coast flutist Lori Bell has been quietly amassing acclaim as a composer and improviser for the past three decades. Daughter of a bandleader father and an accordion-playing mother, she grew up in a music-filled household in Brooklyn. As a youngster, she would take the train to Manhattan to hear jazz in the tiny clubs of Greenwich Village. On Brooklyn Dreaming, her ninth album, Bell returns to her Big Apple roots for a nine-track program featuring six bold originals and three New York-centric interpretations. Bell’s playing is lithe and energetic, her lines unspooling with ease.

It cannot be stated too strongly what a great pianist Tamir Hendelman is and how much he contributes to the album. He swings hard, more so than most contemporary jazz pianists these days, reminiscent of Oscar Peterson. The album creates a unified mood, a reflection of the locale Lori inhabited growing up. Lori's compositions evoke Brooklyn as she knew it long ago. The tributes on her website testify to the excellence of the album and Lori's playing and composing.

The pianist for Lori's gig at the La Jolla Community Center was Mike Garson who has a connection with Brooklyn as well having studied at Brooklyn College. He is best known for his association with the late David Bowie with whom he performed for 25 years and whose presence was felt and alluded to many times throughout the concert. He made his mark on numerous Bowie albums and has traveled thousands of miles on Bowie tours. As a pre-med student Mike was interested in the power of music to heal.

Mike premiered his commissioned work, "Symphonic Healing Suite" on March 1, 2014 at the Segerstrom Hall in Costa Mesa, California. Written in collaboration with patients with various disorders and ailments, this work is a set of movements of original music compositions. The follow-up concert, Music Heals II, in conjunction with the Foundation for Neuroscience, Stroke and Recovery, took place on November 2, 2014.

Ron Satterfield has played with Lori for years. There's not too much biographical information about Ron online, but, suffice it to say, he played up a storm last Friday night especially on a tune Lori wrote for Mike, Avant Garson, on which the interplay between Garson and Satterfield was fantastic.

Lori's playing throughout the evening tied the whole group, which could have easily flown off in different directions, together. Her beautiful tone and fluid scalar lines and emphasis on melodicism makes her music especially accessible to audiences for whom hard core, Charley Parkerish bebop jazz is not a way of life. Her style is characterized by fluid runs and trills rather than arpeggiated chord changes. You can tell she has listened to flute master Hubert Laws.

They started off with a rubato introduction to Stella by Starlight before kicking into the groove. That was followed by Joe Henderson's Inner Urge. As one of the anecdotes I referred to earlier, I almost presented Joe at a concert for the San Diego Jazz Society. Our Board member, Ann Williams, who knew all the jazz greats, was supposed to contact him, and offer what our constrained budget was capable of. Instead she offered him $1500. more, figuring he was worth it, and putting the balance of the tab on her own credit card. Well, Ann was not a rich person and we felt she shouldn't have done that so I had to write Joe a letter canceling the whole event. Such are the experiences and lessons of life.

Joe's composition was followed by Ron singing a David Bowie tune, Wild is the Wind. "Love me, love me, say you do. Let me fly away with you." The emotional urgency and consummate musicianship Ron put out there the entire evening was overwhelming at times. The crowd ate it up.

Next came Freddie Hubbard's Up Jumped Spring. Freddie was, after Clifford Brown, my favorite trumpet player. He was a veritable gladiator of the trumpet; he was fearless. He tried for anything and everything like a high wire artist and usually made it. That made it even more of a heart break when I saw him at the now defunct club Anthology in Little Italy on his 70th birthday tour. Freddie could hardly play at all. In place of the power and elan there was only the inability to get the meagerest air flow through his horn. I thought to myself, "He must have had a stroke."

That made it a little frustrating when Lori engaged Mike, who had played with Freddie, in repartee which was inaudible. I wished Mike had been on mike, because I'm very curious about Freddie's life and what happened to him. Anecdotally again, Freddie stuck John Rubino, proprietor of the Bella Villa jazz club in Cardiff, many years ago with a $3000 bill for cocaine. Freddie himself said his later misfortunes were caused by "partying too much with the rock crowd". Freddie's son, Duane Frederick Hubbard is keeping Freddie's legacy alive on the website. I wish someone would write a biography though. He suffered a heart attack in late November 2008 in Sherman Oaks, California, and died a few weeks later, on December 29, at the age of 70.

In December 2011 Lori received a Global Music Award, the Award of Excellence for her depth of playing, composing and arranging for the "Lori Bell" CD (Beezwax Records). In April 2014 Lori won a second Global Music Award, the Gold Medal Award for her composition "Une Chanson Pour Claude" on the CD "Night Soliloquy" (Azica Records). In March 2016 The GMA's honored a third award for Outstanding Achievement for her 9th studio CD "Brooklyn Dreaming" for album and composition.

They did Miles Davis' All Blues for an encore leaving the crowd wanting more. One more anecdote... Some years ago I presented Lori at the San Diego Library and in the advanced notices I made up a name for her group, - the "ergonomic gastronomers." Lorie didn't get offended and took it all in stride. Thank you Lori for bringing us great music and being your good-natured, happy-go-lucky self.

May 15, 2016

A packed house at the Mingei Museum in Balboa Park was treated to a flute duo billed as Flute Fusion featuring Holly Hofmann, inveterate jazz flautist and promoter, along with Beth Ross-Buckley, classical flautist and promoter. Both Holly and Beth have been long time music presenters in San Diego. Holly started at the Horton Grand and had a memorable gig for many years at the San Diego Museum of Art. Beth started a chamber music group called Camarada in 1994. This night they joined forces. They were backed by a jazz rhythm section composed of Holly's husband, Mike Wofford on piano, Gunnar Biggs, bass, Duncan Moore, drums and Jim Plank, who spanned both jazz and classical worlds, on vibes. My friends, Anna and Rich, accompanied me and were impressed by the quality of the musical offerings.

Holly has never played better, digging in with her trademarked ability to swing and her proficiency on both the standard C flute as well as her specialty, the alto flute, on which she recorded her latest standout CD, Low Life. On her foray into the jazz world classical flautist, Beth Ross Buckley, deserves much credit for her courageousness. She took an improvised solo on Thelma Blue, dedicated to her late mother, for the first time before a public audience and did just fine with a kind assist from Holly who adjusted her microphone so we all could hear. It isn't easy for a classically trained musician to start improvising. They can read anything you set in front of them, but improvising? That's a whole new world.

The tune selection was superb. They did Antonio Carlos Jobim's How Insensitive, a lilting Bossa Nova tune by the Brazilian composer. Mike Wofford either arranged or composed most of the tunes. Lee Morgan's Ceora, a beautifully poignant melody, evoked memories of the jazz great who died tragically at a young age when he was murdered on the bandstand by an ex lover. One of his tunes, The Sidewinder, written on a piece of toilet paper during a break in a recording session, became the second most listened to jazz standard of all time right behind Miles Davis' Kind of Blue. Unfortunately, Morgan was also a heroin addict and lost years of what could have been career building productivity to the habit.

Saturday night, in the culmination of the Jazz @the Jacobs series @ Symphony Hall, jazz vocalist Gregory Porter and his band were featured along with an opening set by curator and trumpeter Gilbert Castellanos. Gilbert was in fine embouchure as usual and he was backed up by the becoming legendary Marshall Hawkins on bass and pianist, local guy, Joshua White on piano. My initial reaction was "Where's the drummer?" Guess none was available for this particular occasion. After what seemed like an interminable 20 minute break, out came Gregory Porter, a former football player at San Diego State. Who says San Diego doesn't have jazz talent? Locals guys and gals know how to play, what to play, when to play, but as Hal Crook once said, it's a bitch figuring out where to play.

Porter won the 2014 Grammy for best jazz vocal album, Liquid Spirit. The New York Times described Porter as "a jazz singer of thrilling presence, a booming baritone with a gift for earthy refinement and soaring uplift" in its review of Liquid Spirit. His just released album Take Me To the Alley reflects his mother's avocation as an advocate for the homeless and the downtrodden as opposed to the Take Me to the Penthouse penchant of so many who ignore the plights of the less fortunate.

As a singer songwriter, Porter can write poetically. All the tunes performed except one were written by him which contributed to a sameness that could have been overcome by throwing in a few more compositions by others. Porter has a powerful, almost operatic voice and sings with a lot of soulfulness. The melodies he constructs, however, are not memorable or hummable; they all have a singsongy similarity which seems to be par for the course in popular music these days. Where are the Irving Berlins and Cole Porters for whom melody was the most important aspect of being a composer? And about that hat that he's never without: In a 2012 interview with Jazzweekley.com he explained why he started wearing it: "I’ve had some surgery on my skin, so this has been my look for a little while and will continue to be for awhile longer.

His backup band was excellent with tremendous sax and bass work. The concert, however, went on too long. The opening set, the 20 minute break and then Porter's portion took the evening's festivities, which started at 8 PM well past 10 o'clock. The cramped up seats at Symphony Hall, as bad as any airplane's, got to me after two hours, and finally I had to get up and leave before the concert was over.

It was announced to everyone's delight that the Jazz@the Jacobs program would continue in the fall starting with the Count Basie (tribute) Orchestra in a tribute to Frank Sinatra featuring Jane Monheit and Dave Damiani. Whew, that should be a knockout! That would be followed in 2017 by a salute to West Coast Jazz. The third in the series is dedicated to Women in Jazz featuring none other than flute virtuoso, Holly Hofmann herself, along with other well known jazz women.

Jazz at Symphony Hall is a good thing. Finally, the jazz world and the classical world are speaking to each other as last weekend's festivities demonstrate. As Duke Ellington said, "There are only two kinds of music—good music and bad music," regardless of how it's labeled. There is so much bad music out there that jazz and classical are finally teamed up together in providing music that is palatable to the audience that has even a modicum of taste and musical sophistication. It needs to be applauded, supported and preserved. Saturday evening's jazz and blues at Symphony Hall and Sunday's merging of jazz and classical at the Mingei Museum are a huge step in the right direction combining the best of both worlds. My friends, Anna and Rich, picked up a copy of Holly Hofmann's Low Life CD on the way out on my recommendation. I'm sure they enjoyed it after they got home.

April 08, 2016

Joe Marillo passed away Saturday, March 26. Born in Niagara Falls, NY, 83 years ago, he moved to San Diego in 1974 from Las Vegas where he had played in show bands for 10 years. He started out playing saxophone in Atlantic City, NJ while swinging from a trapeze.

He was dedicated to bringing straight ahead, mainstream jazz to San Diego for almost 50 years both with his virtuoso playing and his skills as a presenter and impresario. He received the San Diego Music Awards Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003.

After moving here from Las Vegas, Joe immediately started playing and performing in San Diego clubs. I first saw and heard him at Chuck's Steak House in La Jolla where Joe lived "in the ghetto" for his entire life.

There were so many clubs that have gone in and out of business in the last 50 years, and Joe played in all of them. The Crossroads, Elario's, Our Place, Bella Via in Cardiff, Henry's in Oceanside, George's in Encinitas, the Jazz Mine, the Catamaran. The list goes on and on. The ephemeral nature of most jazz clubs is contrasted with the constancy of Joe's presence and dedication to jazz in San Diego over several decades.

Joe initiated a jazz policy at the Catamaran in the 70s that was very successful. He brought in all the greats from the Golden Age of Jazz, roughly 1945 to 1970. People like Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Stitt, Ahmad Jamal, Supersax, Bobby Hutcherson. I was in the audience for many of these gigs. I particularly remember when Bill Evans was there with Philly Joe Jones on drums. Bill's playing was wonderful that night, but Philly Joe sat patiently behind his drum kit in a supporting role not given many chances to solo. Finally, Joe said, "Let Philly Joe go!" Then on the last tune of the set Philly Joe got to play a long drum solo and everyone breathed a sigh of satisfaction. Joe Marillo sat in with all these greats and in the process became one himself.

Unfortunately, Joe's Society for the Preservation of Jazz was too successful at the Catamaran. Management got the idea that they could save money, get rid of Joe and still bring in all the big guys. Of course, it was the beginning of the end. The dolts who thought they could emulate a true and natural impressario like Joe just didn't understand the simpatico in the jazz world that was necessary to make a good thing happen, and the jazz program at the Catamaran was doomed. Joe was the Pied Piper. When the Catamaran got rid of the Pied Pied Piper, the musicians didn't come any more.

As my trumpet playing improved, I got up the nerve one night to ask Joe if I could sit in at his gig at a club in Encinitas. The club was in the corner of an L-shaped strip mall where, it seemed, a lot of jazz clubs were located. Joe let me sit in for one tune and then called something at a furious tempo. I had all I could do to keep up. Many years later I started the San Diego Jazz Society similar to Joe's Society for the Preservation of Jazz. There were a number of jazz societies in those days including the Society for Straight Ahead Jazz and the San Diego Jazz Festival. We presented Joe in numerous venues on many different occasions as well as many other artists. Joe was kind enough to let us use the silhouette of him from his "Lady Caroline" album on our brochure for the San Diego Jazz Society.

We did a series of gigs at the North Coast Repertory Theater. Like many venues there was no piano. This problem was solved by moving my piano from home, a 1908 Story and Clark upright, to the gig. I asked Joe if he would do one of the gigs with him and me as the front line. He graciously consented, and I practiced my head off to be worthy of being on the same stage with him. One of the tunes I called was Charlie Parker's Donna Lee. I cranked up the metronome at home because I wanted to be able to play the head at an ungodly tempo. I counted it off, and Joe, ever the consummate professional, pulled it off without breaking a sweat.

Like many of us Joe was inspired by Charlie Parker, "Bird", as he was known to his fans. I never got to see Bird in person as I was in eighth grade in 1955 when Bird died, but Joe bought him a drink once. Joe didn't get interested in music until he was 20. "That's when I heard my first Charlie Parker record," he said, "and immediately got turned on. It's a strange thing--who knows why we like certain types of music. All I know, to this day, is that something about Parker's sound, his ideas, his saxophone, really got to me, and before long I was buying every Parker record I could find."

Joe was lucky in that he got to do what he really loved in life, and, if he didn't make a great living, at least he survived. He said, "I'm a lot more concerned with realizing my dream of becoming a polished improviser, which is what be-bop is all about. And that's a continual learning process that will never end.

"So as long as I have a place to play, a place to practice my music, I'm content--even if it's only one night a week. And aside from playing live, I'm constantly seeking out new avenues to share my creativity--and my love of be-bop--with others."

Joe was true to his calling till the very end. He was a teacher, an improvisor, a promoter. Be-bop, as Parker's music was called, was his inspiration. For the last almost 50 years, Joe Marillo has been Mr Jazz in San Diego. Clubs have come and gone; venues have come and gone. The one constant was Joe's prescence on the jazz scene having played and presented in all of them. Now he's graduated to playing celestial harmonies with Bird, Diz, Stan and all the rest from the Golden Age. We were fortunate to have shared the same window of time with them and San Diego was fortunate to have had Joe Marillo as our guiding light for the best in jazz for the last 50 years. Joe, we will miss you. RIP, my friend.

A Memorial concert honoring Joe is scheduled for May 24 at Dizzy's, 4275 Mission Bay Drive, San Diego, CA 92109.

March 22, 2016

Joe Wilder was not only a magnificent trumpet player but a gentleman according to all who knew him. I had the privilege of presenting him and saxophonist Marshal Royal along with a local rhythm section composed of Mike Wofford, Bob Magnusson and Roy McCurdy at the Lyceum Theatre in 1990 under the auspices of the San Diego Jazz Society. A CD was made of the performance which, unfortunately, is out of print. Joe helped to break down racial barriers on Broadway, radio, television and in classical music.

Wilder’s sense of propriety was legendary. When Wilder was in Lionel Hampton’s orchestra in the early 1940s, fellow band members used to offer him a $10 bill if he would simply utter one four-letter word. Wilder never collected! A soft-spoken and stately man, he never appeared in public without a tie. He was a non-smoker and non-drinker. He was as impeccable in his playing as he was in his personal life. Classically trained, he had to face the reality that no African-Americans were being hired for symphony jobs in the 1930s and 40s. After auditions for symphony jobs, they were told, "Don't call us; we'll call you."

So he branched out into big bands. He played with the bands of Les Hite, Lionel Hampton, Jimmie Lunceford, Herbie Fields, Sam Donahue, Lucky Millinder, Dizzy Gillespie, Noble Sissle and Count Basie among others! On the road with the Hampton band in Iowa in 1946, Wilder and a fellow trumpeter were refused service at a Chinese restaurant in Des Moines. They stayed for hours and the following day did the same, manifesting passive resistance years before the sit-ins in the South.

He experienced many other outrageous displays of racism as did all other African-Americans during that period. Jim Crow was the prevailing attitude. Blacks had no rights to stay at public hotels or eat in public restaurants. According to Joe's biography, "Softly, With Feeling" by Edward Berger, when Joe was working with Jimmy Gorham's band:

Gorham's band played an engagement at the all-white Warwick Hotel in Philadelphia for a lady who was throwing a party. "This was only the second time that a black band played in the hotel - my father happened to be in the band that first played there years earlier," Wilder said. "And after that engagement, the white union local told the hotel that if they hired any more black bands, they would bar any white bands from playing in there." But the hostess specifically requested Gorham's band, which was a big hit with her guests. "During the intermission," Wilder recalled, "she came over to compliment Jimmy and said with a deep Southern accent, 'Mr. Gorham, I just wanted to tell you that my guests all enjoyed y'all's music. Most of them have never heard a hot nigger band before!' There was a silence in that band room, and then the guys started asking each other, 'Did she say what I think I just heard?' They lit into that woman to the point that some of us actually felt sorry for her because she didn't actually mean to offend us.

Born in Philadelphia in 1922 into a musical family, he grew up in an integrated neighborhood and had both white and black friends. As a child he was featured on a weekly children’s radio program in Philadelphia: Parisian Tailors’ Colored Kiddies of the Air. He attended the Mastbaum School of Music which also produced other notable jazz musicians such as Lee Morgan, Buddy DeFranco, Red Rodney, Bill Barron and Ted Curson. Wilder interrupted his musical career when World War II came around. He was one of the first black marines.

Black Musicians Had to Deal With Racism Especially in the South

In his biography Wilder recounted a serious incident involving Illinois Jacquet when they were traveling in the South with Lionel Hampton's band:

We were in Alabama, and Illinois was late getting to the station, and the train was getting ready to pull out. Illinois didn't have time to run down and get his luggage and stuff into the black coach. So he just got on the first step that was open. He started walking through the white cars, and this conductor, who looked like the Kentucky colonel, hit him and said, "Boy, what do you think you're doing back here?" Illinois said to him, "Who you calling 'boy'?" and kept walking. The guy pulled out a pistol and followed him into the black coach. Illinois was talking back to him, and several of our guys who carried pistols stood up. Our road manager, who was a very nice red-haired Texan named Mack O'Connell, came into the coach just as this guy was threatening to blow Illinois' head off. Mack shouted, "What's going on here?" The conductor said, "Cap'n, is them your niggers?" And Mack said, "Yeah, why?" Well, you better teach 'em how to behave down here!" the conductor replied. Meanwhile, Red Farrington, the band boy, was standing right behind the conductor with a switchblade. Mack O'Connell quieted the whole thing down. He was a nice guy. A lot of guys didn't like him because he had a southern drawl. A lot of us were turned off by the accents, but a lot of these guys were the nicest people you could run into.

It's easy to see how quickly incidents like these involving a black man and a white authority figure like the police can get out of hand like is still happening today.

After his stint with the big bands, Wilder broke the color line by dint of his excellent musicianship started getting gigs for Broadway shows in the 1950s. Ed Berger wrote:

Wilder went on to play in such hit productions as Guys and Dolls and Cole Porter’s Silk Stockings, joining the touring company of the latter in 1953. “They went first to Mr. Porter and asked if he had any objection to a black musician playing first trumpet,” Wilder recalls. “All he asked was, ‘Can he play my music?’ When they told him I could, he answered, ‘Well, that’s all that matters.’ I never got an opportunity to tell him how much I appreciated it.” As a Broadway regular, he was in the pit orchestra of the musical "42nd Street" for more than eight years.

In the mid-50s Wilder joined the elite group of first-call musicians in the New York City studio scene. Again he had to overcome racial barriers. He overcame prejudice and stereotypes with sheer talent and consummate professionalism. “We’re all going to encounter bigotry and racism in some form or other but you can’t let yourself get mired down in those problems,” he says. “When you run into that kind of a situation you stop and you think about the guys that you’ve known, the friends you’ve had, the people who were absolutely in no way like that. And those are the people that you relate to.”

He was on staff at ABC from 1957 to 1974. He was heard on “The Voice of Firestone,” “The Dick Cavett Show” and other programs that used live music. As a non-traveling musician, he was able to stay at home with his family unlike most jazz musicians of that day. Wilder was adaptable enough that he could play any kind of music. He also cut some jazz albums under his own name as well as many albums as a sideman for other jazz musicians and vocalists.

Wilder Never Gave Up His Dream

Still Wilder never gave up his dream of becoming a classical musician. He went back to school at Manhattan School of Music and did several gigs with the New York Philharmonic. In 1968 he became principal trumpet for the Symphony of the New World, which he cited as “the first fully integrated symphony orchestra in the United States.” He also recorded his own album of classical trumpet pieces thus predating by 15 years and paving the way for Wynton Marsalis' dual role in jazz and classical music.

Joe Wilder’s trumpet sound remains one of the glories of American music. His elegant solo style is instantly identifiable, drawing from the swing and bebop eras he straddled, as well as reflecting his classical experience. As Whitney Balliett wrote in a 1986 New Yorker profile of Wilder, “His solos are immaculately designed.… He makes the song gleam.” Whether skillfully manipulating his mutes and plunger, or displaying his ravishing tone on open horn, Wilder’s solos tell a story with poise, wit, swing and feeling. He is also one of those rare musicians who can captivate an audience by simply playing a melody.

In Joe's biography Wynton Marsalis wrote in the foreword: "Beyond the excellence of his playing, as a man he has such dignity and feeling and is so engaged and intelligent. He brings a warmth to every situation. He loved my kids who were very young at the time, and was constantly looking out for them. He would tell me, 'You've got to be attentive to your kids.' He's always talking about family and the importance of savoring moments together."

In 2008 Mr. Wilder was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts, the nation’s highest honor for a jazz musician.

Joe Wilder died at the age of 92 in 2014 in New York City. Wilder's survivors include Solveig, his Swedish born wife of 56 years; daughters Elin Wilder-Melcher, Solveig Wilder and Inga-Kerstin Wilder; son Joseph Wilder Jr.; and six grandchildren.

November 24, 2015

Peter Sprague brought an extremely talented all star group into Dizzy's last Saturday to play classics from the Golden Age of Rock. Although he's primarily known as a jazz musician, Peter has mastered the essentials of all musical traditions and genres. As a teen-ager growing up in Del Mar, Peter and his siblings were exposed to their father's jazz record collection. But like most teen-agers in their rebellious mode, they were attracted not to the music of their parents' generation but to the sounds that were happening around them and listened to by their contemporarires. That would be rock 'n roll, the music of the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Cream, Bob Marley and Jimi Hendrix. They also condescended to give credence to one of their father's jazz rock albums by Blood, Sweat and Tears.

Peter is such a talented arranger that he took arrangements off these albums and created something wonderful for a septet of marvelous musicians spanning the generations including Leonard Patton and Rebecca Jade on vocals, Danny Green, piano, Justin Grinnell, acoustic and electric basses, Duncan Moore, drums and his brother Trip Sprague on sax, flute and harmonica.

Peter must have a veritable library of arrangements for all the configurations of musical groups that he has created from duo gigs at Roxy's ice cream parlor in Encinitas to symphonic arrangements he's performed on the concert stage at San Diego's Symphony Hall. In addition to local gigs, Peter travels all over the world as a sideman with Diane Reeves and others. From the concert stages of Europe, Peter will come home to do a local gig in San Diego. He's never idle. I guess all that surfing revs up his energy level.

The sell-out crowd at Dizzy's was treated to a melange of classic rock including BST's arrangement of the jazz classic "God Bless the Child" written and performed by the great Billie Holiday. Despite the fact that this song was an arrangement of an arrangement of an arrangement, it retained all the power and soulfulness of Billie's original recording. Rebecca Jade, who was superlative the entire evening, seemingly channeled Billie Holiday whose tragic life was cut short by the racism and police brutality of the 1950s.

As usual Peter's sidemen were the best musicians in San Diego. Duncan Moore, sitting behind a brand new drum kit, anchored the band with his usual aplomb. I was impressed by the musicianship and expertise of bassist Justin Grinnell. As in most rock groups, the bassist plays a key role in setting the mood and revving up the energy. And speaking of energy, this band had it coming out their ears. Peter made his double necked guitar sound like a multitude of different instruments with his synthesizer hook-up. Pianist Danny Green, who contributed some fantastic solos, could also make his instrument sound like everything from a Baby Grand to a Hammond B3.

In addition to his consistently professional sax work, Tripp Sprague covered all the bases as the only horn in the group. Leonard Patton gave voice to Stevie Wonder's historic compositions. Peter can put these arrangements away in his library and pull them out again whenever he is in the mood to assemble a rock group and remember the classic era, the quality of which is not being produced by the rock musicians of today.

I've known Peter for a long time from the days that he would open his guitar case and play on the sidewalks of Del Mar for tips through the days when I was President of the San Diego Jazz Society in the 1980s. Peter was the only musician to take advantage of our non-profit status to send out a monthly newsletter. Today those newsletters are electronic emails, but young musicians should take note of Peter's career to understand what it takes to build a successful life as a musician. It's not enough just to play well. You need to be not only versatile like Peter is but you have to be a self-promoter as well or at least find someone else to promote you. You need to take any gig no matter how humble, and eventually you might make it, as Peter has, from being just a local musician to playing on the world's most venerable concert stages.

Chuck Perrin, proprietor of Dizzy's has been in the business of presenting and promoting musicians for 20 years. Say what you will, but his formula has been successful and has given aspiring musicians, as well as established ones, much needed exposure to San Diego audiences who always seem very appreciative as this audience was. Peter's arrangements and San Diego's most talented musicians gave a performance worthy of the record books.

Chuck is an accomplished writer and performer himself. Korean reissue specialist Beatball Records is preparing to release the most comprehensive collection of Chuck and Mary Perrin’s original folk music yet assembled. The 7 CD box set contains remastered paper package replica versions of their long-sought after Webster’s Last Word LP’s: “Brother & Sister” (1968), “Next of Kin” (1969), and “Life Is A Stream” (1971).

Peter and Chuck are both lucky in the sense that they are doing and manifesting in reality what remains their passion in life. There are some lessons here too for young people just starting out. Contrast this with the jazz club, Anthology, that debuted a few years ago in San Diego's Little Italy. This club had everything: high tech gear up the wazoo, three levels of seating and bars and food nonpareil. A lot of money went into it. But what happened? A couple years later it went defunct. I guess it wasn't the owners' passion; maybe money was.

So Chuck Perrin labors on, a labor of love. Dizzy's in Pacific Beach is a jet ski rental place by day. And if you want to rent a U-Haul, you can do that there too. By night it's a jazz club. The comestibles and aperitifs are somewhat limited - just coffee, hot chocolate and cookies, but the music is an essential part of the San Diego jazz scene.

October 28, 2015

There is a nice little jazz series running in San Diego at the Handlery Hotel's 950 lounge at 950 Hotel Circle North. This has been put together by Holly Hofmann who has been presenting concerts in San Diego for 30 years or more. In addition she plays a helluva flute. Recently I saw Stef Johnson with Rob Thorsen and the week before Gilbert Castellanos and Bobby Cressey. The place has a nice happy hour menu and reasonably priced libations. There is no admission or cover charge. Parking is free with validation.

Jazz does not have that many dedicated venues in San Diego so the jazz loving public has to rely mainly on the musicians themselves to create their own gigs. There are no institutional venues such as classical music has. No Symphony Halls. No billionaire sponsors. For that you have to go to New York City, the epicenter of jazz. We do have a dedicated jazz radio station - KSDS-FM - 88.3. Now we just need a billionaire to step up and underwrite the equivalent of New York's Dizzy's Club Coca Cola at Lincoln Center. Holly would make a wonderful impresario for such a venue because her connections in the jazz world are endless and her dedication, nonpareil.

San Diego Has Great Jazz Talent

The talent pool in San Diego and LA is considerable. Many jazz musicians have attempted to make a go of it in San Diego, but then moved on to greener pastures when prospects became untenable. One such was Hal Crook who started a school here and had an excellent big band which performed weekly. Like Hal said about his book, How to Improvise, at a workshop I attended, "My book will explain to you what to play, when to play, how to play. The only thing it can't tell you is where to play." That's the hard nut to crack. Having moved on, Hal is now at the Berklee School of Music in Boston.

The aforementioned Bobby Cressey, in addition to playing jazz organ at the Handlery, is also the organist for the San Diego Padres. A man of many hats, in addition to jazz he plays electro, hip hop, dubstep, reggae, classical, rnb, ska, gospel and blues. He currently plays with the world famous DJ Skee’s Skeetox band. I guess one has to be involved in many aspects of the music business these days to make a go of it. But maybe he's spreading himself too thin as a jazz artist. Just sayin.

On the other hand Gilbert Castellanos, winner of San Diego Music Awards artist of the year in 2013, is a full on dedicated jazz musician. His mastery of the trumpet has increased by leaps and bounds over the years that I've been following him. Gilbert honors the history and tradition of jazz with every performance. In particular he played Clifford Brown's composition "Delilah" and Charlie Parker's "Segment." Clifford Brown and Charlie Parker were two of the most important musicians in the development of jazz. Unfortunately they both died young, much too young.

Quincy Jones: Brown Was the Very Essence of Musical and Moral Maturity

Charlie Parker was a heroin addict and died at the age of 34 on the Jazz Baroness', Pannonica de Koenigswarter's, couch. He had multiple organ failures. He created the greatest revolution in any art form in the 20th century. Unfortunately, he couldn't overcome or transcend the racist society he grew up in or his own lifestyle.

Clifford Brown was clean living, hardly even touching alcohol. He was an inspiration to other players who had thought that they had to be high to play well. On going through my old vinyl albums recently, I spent some time reading the liner notes of a few rare Clifford Brown albums which went into detail about that tragic rainy night when Clifford lost his life in an auto accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike on his way to the next gig. It was in 1956.

He and pianist Richie Powell were catching some shut eye while Powell's wife, Nancy, was at the wheel. Nancy was known to be an erratic driver. There were no seat belts in those days. Brown and the Powells were all killed instantly after the car hit a bridge abutment. It was Clifford's second wedding anniversary with his wife LaRue. It was her 22nd birthday. Clifford was 25 and, despite having spent a year in the hospital following a prior auto accident in 1950, is a major part of jazz history having only been active for about four years.

Nearly everyone who knew Clifford agree on his likeability and welcoming personality. “To me, the name of Clifford Brown will always remain synonymous with the very essence of musical and moral maturity,” Quincy Jones said. “This name will stand as a symbol of the ideals every your jazz musician should strive to attain.”

After his death, Clifford's wife LaRue remained active in the jazz world establishing in 1994 the Clifford Brown Jazz Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to Brown's memory and inspiring a love for jazz among young people. The Foundation is currently under the direction of Clifford Brown III, Brown's grandson and a respected Bay Area trumpeter and music producer.

Clifford's son Clifford Brown Jr has received the Ampex Award of Excellence as the nation's top jazz Program Director, and in 1996 he received the Beverly Anne Johnson Media Award for his many years of being a "positive Black male role model." Since 1979 Clifford Brown Jr. has been one of the most popular radio personalities in the San Francisco Bay Area and has made the Brown name synonymous with broadcasting there.

So life goes on.

Clifford Brown Is My Ideal As a Jazz Trumpet Player

Clifford Brown is my ideal as a jazz trumpet player and composer - beyond Miles Davis or Dizzy Gillespie. He adhered to and transcended the tradition of Charlie Parker who pointed the way for others before his young life came to an end. Gilbert Castellanos, Holly Hofman, Rob Thorsen and a few other local San Diegans follow in that venerable tradition while expanding it at the same time. Who knows what heights could have been scaled had Clifford Brown survived that crash that rainy night?

While Pannonica de Koenigswarter was called the Jazz Baroness, Holly Hofmann certainly deserves the epithet: Jazz Empress of San Diego. Holly has presented concerts at Diego's Loft from 1988-90; Horton Grand from 1990-1997; Bristol Hotel from 1998-2000; San Diego Museum of Art from 2002-2009; Birch North Park Theater from 2010-2012 and Croce's First Thursdays from 2015-.

In addition to her impressive resume as an impresario, she placed eighth in the flute category of the Down Beat Critics Poll last year. On her latest CD, "Low Life," made with her husband, pianist Mike Wofford, she plays the alto flute exclusively. Jazz critic Dan McClenaghan says this in his review of the album:

Holly Hofmann, one of the jazz world's premier flutists, explores a deeper-toned territory with Low Life: The Alto Flute Project. Primarily a conventional C flautist—with an impressive discography—Hofmann has broken out the lower tone of the alto flute in her concerts, and occasionally on record. Now it's time for a full length CD featuring her expertise on the instrument....

Hofmann's lone writing contribution to the set, "Lumeiere de la Vie," is a five minute long gold nugget of a tune, a smooth and gorgeous masterpiece, and the CD's closer, guitarist Pat Metheny's "Farmer's Trust" blossoms like a spring flower, a sweet and unpretentious ballad, so delicate and lovely in the hands of this band and flutist Hofmann that it can make a grown man cry.

This Friday, October 30, Rob Thorsen will be at the Handlery with L.A. guitarist Steve Cotter. Steve comes from the Wes Montgomery school of great, swinging guitarists. Fernando Gomez is back on drums.

July 21, 2015

1915 was a very good year because three giants of twentieth century music were born that year: Frank Sinatra, Billie Holliday and Billy Strayhorn. This year is the hundredth anniversary of their births. By far the best known is Frank Sinatra, born in Hoboken, NJ to a middle class Italian family. His mother, Dolly, was a real go getter who became a political force in Hoboken. She secured Frank his first real job as a singer with the Hoboken Four, and got her husband hired by the Fire Department. When they told her they didn't have any openings, she told them, "Make one." They did. Frank's stories of growing up poor were so much BS. The Sinatra family moved into a $13,400. house in Hoboken in the middle of the Depression, an astronomical sum in those days. She had befriended so many people in Hoboken that, when the Democratic machine needed votes, Dolly could deliver them. She also had a thriving business as a midwife and an abortionist. Unfortunately, she died in a plane crash, a plane that Frank had chartered to bring her from Palm Springs to Las Vegas for his opening at Caesar's Palace.

Frank got his first major job as a singer with trumpeter Harry James and his band. From there he went with Tommy Dorsey's band. He created a sensation with the "Bobby Soxers", teenage girls that moaned and swooned over him at the Paramount Theater in New York. Little known is the fact that his press agent, George Evans, paid a few girls to instigate the exuberance and before long many others joined in making Frank the first singing superstar in the 1940s. His following was similar to that of Elvis Presley in the fifties.

Later Frank gravitated to Hollywood and made some unmemorable movies. His career flagging in the early 50s, he begged for the part of Maggio in the film, From Here to Eternity, based on the eponymous novel by James Jones. His ex-wife Ava Gardner put in a good word for him with the producer and the rest is history. Frank won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and his career, which had been on the skids, rebounded.

Although he made over 50 movies altogether, he was best known as a singer who recorded for Columbia, Capitol and Reprise records. As a vocalist he had over 2000 recordings. Although he couldn't read music and was a ninth grade drop-out, he recorded almost every song ever written for the Great American Song Book and made a fortune with his investments in Las Vegas casinos. In a symbiotic relationship with Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana, the Sands became the House That Frank Built. Frank brought in the customers, was paid $400,000 a week, and everybody made money. He also had an investment in the Cal-Neva Lodge in Lake Tahoe.

There was only one song he had problems with though: Billy Strayhorn's Lush Life. Reports are that Frank stomped out of the recording studio in frustration over not being able to master this song. Billy Strayhorn wrote it as a 16 year old teenager living in the Pittsburg, PA ghetto. It is widely regarded as one of the most sophisticated and difficult songs in twentieth century American music. However, Lady Gaga didn't have any problems with it in her recent recording.

The lyrics have references to world travel and the French language from a 16 year old who had never been out of Pittsburg. "A weekend in Paris will ease the bite of it. All I care is to smile in spite of it." The song's opening words are:

"I used to visit all the very gay places those come what may placeswhere one relaxes on the axis of the wheel of lifeto get the feel of lifefrom jazz and cocktails"

This song was from an era where "gay" had completely different connotations from what it has today. Nevertheless, Billy Strayhorn was a closeted gay man. He eventually became Duke Ellington's right hand man composing much of the music that Ellington was known for as Strayhorn stayed in the background. When Ellington invited him to come to New York City to meet him, he gave him the directions: Take the "A" train to Sugar Hill in Harlem. In honor of that meeting he wrote the tune that became Ellington's theme song, Take the "A"Train, or as Lawrence Welk later announced it, "Take a Train."

Some of the other Strayhorn compositions and my favorites are the following:

Chelsea Bridge, Day Dream, A Flower is a Lovesome Thing, Passion Flower, Raincheck, Satin Doll, Something to Live For and Upper Manhattan Medical Group.

Billie Holiday had a tragic life dogged by racism and addiction. As it says on biography.com: Billie Holiday was one of the most influential jazz singers of all time. She had a thriving career for many years before she lost her battle with addiction. Her autobiography was made into the 1972 film Lady Sings the Blues starring Diana Ross. In 2000, Billie Holiday was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Billie was not only a singer but a songwriter too. Among her compositions are "God Bless the Child", "Fine and Mellow" and "Don't Explain." Although she didn't write it, she became identified with the song "Strange Fruit" about black lynchings in the south:

"Southern trees bear strange fruit,Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees."

She starts out her autobiography with: "Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen, and I was three." After being raped as a child, she became a teenage prostitute in her mother's bordello. She escaped the poverty and misery of her life by listening to the jazz of Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong. Around 1930 she started singing in local New York City clubs.

At the age of 18, Holiday was discovered by producer John Hammond while she was performing in a Harlem jazz club. Hammond was instrumental in getting Holiday recording work with an up-and-coming clarinetist and bandleader - Benny Goodman.

Holiday toured with the Count Basie Orchestra in 1937 where she met lifelong soul mate, Lester Young, who named her "Lady Day." In return she called the tenor saxophonist "Prez." Artie Shaw signed Billie as his band's vocalist in 1938, becoming the first white bandleader to hire a full-time black female singer to tour the segregated south. Promoters objected to Holiday—for her race and for her unique vocal style—and she ended up leaving the orchestra out of frustration.

Touring the U.S. in the 1930s meant running head-on into racial discrimination. While with Basie in Detroit, a theater manager insisted the light-skinned Holiday blacken her face so the audience would not mistake her for white and get angry she was performing with black musicians. While touring with Shaw's mostly white band in the segregationist South, it was difficult just finding a restaurant where the band could eat together.

After she left Shaw's band, she went back to New York City where she performed at the liberal Cafe Society, the first racially integrated night club in the United States. She first sang "Strange Fruit" there. At owner Barney Josephson's insistence, she closed her set with this song, leaving the stage without taking any encores, so that the audience would be left to think about the meaning of the song.

Billie Holiday was one of Frank Sinatra's favorite singers bringing the three cats born in 1915 full circle. Billie Holidays's records and Billy Strayhorn's compositions will never go out of style. Nothing classic ever does. In addition Frank has left a lasting legacy as he has a whole channel on Sirius satellite radio devoted to his music. They also play Billie's records and Strayhorn's compositions there. Just the other day I heard Lady Gaga singing Lush Life on Sirius.

Some last thoughts on Frank Sinatra. Frank, despite his personal foibles and peccadilloes, was a force of nature unlike any other major entertainment figure of the 20th century. He was a movie star, but, unlike other movie stars who could only make money from making a movie, Frank could go out and perform on a weekly basis and make $400,000 a week in Las Vegas and around the world similar to Peggy Lee or Lena Horn. He also had invested in Vegas casinos and made lots of money that way even when he wasn't performing. He got a check for $1,000,000. from Jack Warner to merge his Reprise records with Warner studios.

Frank liked associating with those at the pinnacles of power whether it was President Jack Kennedy or Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana. As a very generous and gregarious guy, he fixed up both Jack and Sam with the same woman - Judith Campbell. He had a lifelong vendetta against gossip columnists, particularly female gossip columnists including Barbara Walters, because, like most celebrities, he felt his private life should remain private. Unfortunately, there was such a gigantic spread between Frank's public image and his private reality that the likes of Kitty Kelly who wrote "His Way, the Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra", could not resist scandalmongering. His valet, George Jacobs, corroborated most of Kelly's writing but did so in a much more affectionate manner in his book, "Mr S: My Life With Frank Sinatra".

Frank experienced his share of tragedy including the death of his mother in an airplane crash (into San Gorgonio Mountain that also claimed Dean Martin's son), the death of his best friend, Jilly Rizzo, in a fiery car crash in Palm Springs as well as the deaths of his Rat Pack buddies, Sammy Davis Jr and Dean Martin and his songwriting buddy Jimmy Van Heusen. Ever the survivor Frank outlived them all and is buried in Cathedral City in Desert Memorial Park along with his parents, Jilly, and many of his friends. His fourth wife, Barbara, still maintains a home in Palm Springs and is involved with the Barbara Sinatra Children's Center for abused children.

In any event his life is a life to ponder and his legacy in music will remain for all time. He had tremendous luck and good taste in his arrangers - Nelson Riddle, Don Costa, Axel Stordahl and others who had a huge hand in making his albums the classics they are. Frank associated with the best musicians and arrangers in the business. Of course he had the money to hire the London Symphony Orchestra and pay them triple scale for an all day session if he had wanted to. His pianist, Bill Miller, accompanied Frank for more than 50 years and played the excellent, timeless barroom piano intro to Frank's classic saloon song, "Make it One for My Baby and One More for the Road."

Touring the U.S. in the 1930s meant coming head-on against racial discrimination. While with Basie in Detroit, a theatre manager insisted the light-skinned Holiday blacken her face so the audience would not mistake her for white and get angry she was performing with black musicians. While touring with Shaw's mostly white band in the segregationist South, it was difficult just finding a restaurant where the band could eat together. - See more at: http://www.legacy.com/news/legends-and-legacies/billie-holiday-the-tragic-life-of-lady-day/500/#sthash.RYey3TDj.dpufShe suffered so much racism with Artie Shaw's band when they toured the south that she left the band and went back to New York City where she performed at the liberal Cafe Society, the first racially integrated night club in the United States. She first sang "Strange Fruit" there; at owner Barney Josephson's insistence, she closed her set with this song, leaving the stage without taking any encores, so that the audience would be left to think about the meaning of the song.

July 17, 2015

Singer-songwriter-trombonist Natalie Cressman brought her quintet to Dizzy's Jazz Club Saturday, July 11. Natalie has been creating quite a stir lately with her 8th place finish in the trombone category of the Down Beat critics' poll, Rising Star division. Her band has a very contemporary sound, sort of a jazz-rock groove. And groove they did.

Natalie wrote most of the songs. I'm assuming she did the arrangements too which were fantastic. She made the most out of two horns - trumpet and trombone - and a killer rhythm section consisting of Mike Bono on guitar, Michael Mitchell on drums and Adam Goldman on bass. I particularly enjoyed the drummer although he stayed in the background the whole time. There was an energy to this band especially when they cut loose on the last number.

By my count they did 15 selections, a lot of high quality music for one set. Plenty of solo space was allotted to trumpeter Ivan Rosenberg who also did the photography for her album, Turn the Sea. The trumpet-trombone ensemble sections sounded at times like an entire brass section. Since Josh also sang, there was a lot of versatility in the arrangements which had vocal as well as instrumental duets and voice cum brass sections. I was surprised at the sophistication and attention to detail in the arrangements. Natalie sure has a lot of writing chops and the musicians were all well rehearsed and of the highest calibre.

A song called "The Unknown", according to Natalie, was about young adults just starting out trying to find their way. Since she is in her early twenties, the song was about her real world reality although she has made great strides in just a few years. Trey Anastasio, front man of jam band behemoth Phish, called the 23 year old about five years ago with a job for her: playing trombone and singing backup in his eponymous solo group.

Born in San Francisco, Cressman attended the Manhattan School of Music in New York City where she currently resides. She comes from a musical family. Cressman’s parents are Jeff, also a trombone player, and Sandy, a jazz vocalist with a particular interest in Brazilian music. Her father is a longtime collaborator with Santana, and once played a tour behind Anastasio.

A song called "Radio Silence" showcased the precision and musicianship of the group. There was a mini set of duos with guitarest Bono. One of these, "Where We Started," featured her beautiful voice with the lyric "I don't want to be the prize that you always win. I wish we never started. Living brokenhearted." Reminded me of the words from a song by the New York Voices Now That the Love is Over with the line "Why did the loving ever have to start." Mike wrote Goodbye Lullaby, a very pretty tune.

The duos were nice, but the energy level dropped precipitously. I could have done with a couple less of these. When the band finally came back they grooved totally taking the energy level back to an exciting pitch. Mike Bono cut loose and the excellent rhythm section proved they could really cook even in a nontraditional jazz framework and without the amped out pyrotechnics of typical rock.

Called a "velveteen-voiced brass-blower" by the Denver Post, Natalie has stretched across stylistic boundaries with every project she takes on and has manifested the depth of her musicianship and versatility while blending seamlessly into so many different musical settings. Enamored with the music of Brazil, Cuba, India, along with the American jazz and folk traditions, Natalie's wide ranging enthusiasm for new music has propelled her into a richly diverse musical career.

I bought a copy of Turn the Sea at Dizzy's after the show, recorded in 2013, and I must say I much prefer the live performance to the album as good as it is. The energy and musicianship of the band members combined with Natalie's arrangements give the band a contemporary jazz-rock feel while the album had more of a jazz-folk feel, ala Joni Mitchell. It was nice to see though that the album involved the band's family members, about the best kind of collaboration a young musician could ask for.

If it weren't for Chuck Perrin, proprietor of Dizzy's, young aspiring musicians such as these would have no venue in San Diego. Thanks to him, San Diego still has one jazz club where they can perform and contribute to the cultural diversity without which San Diego, albeit a surfing paradise, would be a cultural backwater. These young musicians, many of whom are products of the Manhattan School of Music, Juilliard and other prestigious institutions deserve to be seen and heard. Chuck Perrin has been their host at Dizzy's for 15 years now. For him it's a labor of love more than anything else.

February 08, 2015

A rare night out on the town took Judy and I to San Diego's premier jazz supper club, Croce's Park West, at 2760 5th Avenue, to hear Los Angeles pianist Josh Nelson and his trio for a tribute to the great American composers - Cole Porter, Harold Arlen and the Gershwins. Arriving there we decided to use the valet parking since Judy is ambulatorily challenged. For $5 it was cheaper than a lot and within 10 steps of the door. What a deal! Croce's has a music room separate from the noisiness of the bar area, full of comfortable seating, warm ambiance and great sight lines. The non-amplified music was gentle on our ears.

Josh was running a little late having had a harrowing day. His car carrying himself and drummer Dan Schnelle had broken down in Long Beach. Fortunately for him and for us, there was a rental agency nearby. It was a miracle that he made the gig at all. Judy and I settled into our seats and ordered off the prix fixe menu for $35. The ala carte menu was a little more expensive. The food consisting of salad, entrée and dessert did Chef Russell Rummer proud and was more than we could eat. The low, low cover charge of $10 per person compares favorably with the $35. cover at the Blue Note, Iridium or Village Vanguard in New York City.

After a warm-up tune, the group launched into Cole Porter's "So in Love," one of my favorite Porter tunes. During ubiquitous and staunch bassist Rob Thorsen's solo, I found myself thinking "he's just doing too much rollicking for this tune." "So in Love" is intensely emotional music and one must almost channel Cole Porter to elucidate the nuances thereof. The musician should be thinking the words and melody and forgetting the harmonic structure. Thorsen, however, seemed to be wailing on the changes.

"So in Love" is painfully poignant with an undercurrent of mystery like a lot of Porter tunes. Is it about unrequited love? Is it about his inability as a closeted gay man to be comfortable with the role he set for himself of hiding behind a sham marriage? Is it about the shame he felt in not being able to fulfill his wife's desires? Perhaps it was the ache he felt for someone he loved and hated the thought of possibly losing. He was genuinely devoted to his wife, Linda, on an emotional level and they remained married for 35 years until her death in 1954. "I'm yours till I die. So in love. So in love. So in love with you am I."

For an emotion laden jazz performance of this genre, check out Rahsaan Roland Kirk's "If I Loved You," a show tune by Rodgers and Hammerstein written for the musical Carousel. Rahsaan's passion is unmistakable and evidentiary.

Next up was the composer of "Over the Rainbow" and "Come Rain or Come Shine," Harold Arlen. Arlen, composer of over 500 songs, was a veritable contributor to the Great American Songbook. "Out of This World," with words by Johnny Mercer, one of Arlen's more obscure works, was nicely done showing off the great musicianship of all concerned. Resurrecting great tunes like this is a way of testifying to the timelessness of the great American composers while ignoring the fads that are such an inherent part of "popular" music.

The classic "Embraceable You" by George and Ira Gershwin came next. You can hardly go wrong with tune selections like this. The trio's interpretation, especially Josh's out of tempo solo on the last chorus, was sensitively carried out. Next Josh, a very personable fellow, expounded on his interest in space travel with a monologue about the Mars Rover, the inspiration for his own composition, "Spirit," which is on his latest album due out February 15 entitled Discovering Mars. I thought "Oh, no. This is going to be some sort of techno punk stuff," but was I surprised. This was the sleeper of the set, a beautifully crafted tune that was Judy's favorite of the night. They finished off the set with Porter's "In the Still of the Night," the definitive version of which in my opinion is on Frank Sinatra's 1961 Ring-a-Ding Ding album.

I wasn't familiar with Josh Nelson before the night began, but I'm glad I came and am the better for having experienced his music. He seems like such a young guy, but yet he's been on the music scene for 17 years and presently tours as part of Natalie Cole's band among other things. He has some impressive credentials like winner of the Louis Armstrong Award and finalist in the Thelonius Monk competition. I wish him well. Check him out at his website.

Jazz on the first Thursdays of the month is presented at Croce's by jazz impresario and master flutist, Holly Hofmann, San Diego's only acknowledged down beat magazine poll participant. Having garnered 100 votes in down beat's "Rising Star" category, Holly remarked, "It makes me smile that I can be a “Rising Star” in midlife and with thirteen recordings as a leader."

Equally important is Holly's dedicated role keeping jazz alive in San Diego which she's been doing for more than 25 years while at the same time performing around the globe. If Holly is the presenter, you know the music is going to be good. Her latest album Low Life, rated 4 stars in down beat, is one of my favorites, so much so that I have sent copies to my friends. Alto great Phil Woods said of Holly “Along with Hubert Laws, Holly is frankly the best jazz flute player today.”

Croce's reminds me of the sophisticated supper clubs that stars such as Peggy Lee used to perform in. Having just finished reading James Gavin's biography of her, Is That All There Is?, I was taken back to the 1950s and 60s when Lee performed at such clubs as Basin Street East and the Copacabana, making as much as $12,500 a week. Of course this was nothing compared to the remuneration at later Las Vegas gigs. Since Little Italy's Anthology closed, Croce's Park West is one of the few remaining places where high quality music and comestibles in a sophisticated atmosphere are extant.

Judy and I attended the 6 PM dinner show which was just right for aging hipsters who don't like to stay out too late. There was another show at 8PM. We were home in our pajamas by 8:15 PM having enjoyed an infrequent night out on the town. We're already looking forward to the first Thursday in March and taking our friends with us on a return trip to Croce's Park West.

August 17, 2013

San Diego jazz musician Mike Wofford is best known for having been the accompanist for Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald. He also was one of the promulgators of the west coast cool jazz sound, having played with the likes of Chet Baker, Shorty Rogers and Shelly Manne at the Hermosa Beach Lighthouse in the 1950s and 60s and later at Shelly's club, the Manne-Hole, on North Cahuenga Blvd in Hollywood.

His current offering "It's Personal" honors his wife, jazz flutist Holly Hofmann, who has been a major force in the presentation of jazz in San Diego for over two decades as well as, in my opinion, the best jazz flutist playing today. This album contains four originals by Mike and eight tunes from the jazz lexicon that are not often heard. This gives the album a fresh and vital quality which adds to the overall atmosphere of elegance, a Mike Wofford trademark. The time signatures are relaxed; the improvisations meld seamlessly with the tune statements, and the music flows effortlessly and creatively making this one of the best jazz albums of 2013.

Mike acknowledges his predecessors at the jazz piano such as Jimmy Rowles and Earl "Fatha" Hines, the latter of which is honored with the only blues on the album, titled "Hines Catch-Up" (a play on words - Heinz Ketchup anyone?). Although unacknowledged as an influence on his website, this album reminds me very much of Tommy Flanagan's album "Jazz Poet." Mike is not only a poet as well but a wizard who manifests the accumulated wisdom of a lifetime as a jazz artist. He respects the jazz tradition without being bound by it.

There is a feeling of serenity and peacefulness on this album which is guaranteed to reduce your stress level. It is an antidote to the freneticism of current popular music culture, a respite and a refuge for all who are willing to open their doors of perception and walk in.

Single note lines predominate accompanied by unobtrusive chords executed with a light touch. This album can and should be listened to intently, but it also could be the most sophisticated accompaniment to an intelligent conversation or an art gallery visit. It is never intrusive or demanding but is there to be savored by those desiring a richly rewarding experience. The album's impressionistic quality would be a perfect complement to a viewing of the Impressionists at the Musee d'Orsay for instance.

Rather than taking the route of esteemed jazz pianist Bill Evans, who polished and honed the same tunes from the Great American Songbook for most of his life or even that of Keith Jarrett, who with his Standards Trio has touched base with these same tunes before launching an exploration of his own, Mike has chosen to include relatively obscure tunes by mostly well known jazz composers. This has contributed to an album of remarkable uniqueness and eloquence while at the same time maintaining the highest esthetic standards of integrity and beauty.

Tunes such as "I waited for You" by Dizzy Gillespie and Gil Fuller are representative of the major jazz composers included here. Mike's improvisation and tune statement on this track and throughout the album are exquisite. It is music that can be listened to multiple times with new vistas opening up on repeated listenings. This is the hallmark of a great jazz album.

"Springsville" by Johnny Carisi was recorded by Miles Davis on his Miles Ahead album with arrangements by Gil Evans. Carisi's better known composition, "Israel" was recorded by Miles on his "Birth of the Cool" album and has become a jazz standard, deservedly so. Mike hearkens back to his west coast cool jazz roots with this track.

"Nica's Tempo" composed by Gigi Gryce is not to be confused with the more often heard "Nica's Dream" composed by Horace Silver. Both tunes honor the jazz baronness, Pannonica de Koenigswarter, who became a jazz fan after hearing Thelonious Monk's "Round Midnight" and almost singlehandedly kept Monk's career (and life for that matter) afloat after he lost his cabaret card and couldn't perform in New York City jazz clubs. As usual Mike has taken the road less traveled by with this tune selection.

The only selection on the album that is not to my personal taste is "Once in a Lifetime" a compilation of two tunes which both happen to have the same name. The first "Once in a Lifetime" is a little too poppish for me and the second is by the Talking Heads, a band that was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. Need I say more? However, it shows Mike's willingness to venture into waters that are not for the fainthearted like myself. I would rather have heard Mike's version of "Lament" which was on Tommy Flanagan's "Jazz Poet" album.

The last tune on the album "No More" was recorded by Billie Holiday in 1944 and seldom heard since. Mike does a masterful job leaving me loving his interpretation but wondering what I just heard. Having listened to this tune again and again I still couldn't whistle it for you. That's the genius of Mike's artistry. You love it but you end up wondering what it was you just heard. Original, creative but rooted in the jazz tradition, Mike's playing leaves other better known jazz pianists in the dust. This album has the easygoing quality of Zoot Sims' later albums, understated, relaxed, confident in the jazz tradition but still reaching for the stars.

Sit back, relax and let this music wash over you. You'll be glad that you did and be better for it.

A final word: The recording by Peter Sprague at the Spragueland studio is excellent. Peter, a world class guitarist in his own right, is also an award winning recording engineer, mentor and producer for other artists' albums. Together with Mike's wife, flutist and presenter, Holly Hofman, the three of them form the nexus of jazz in San Diego. They are resources to be treasured and celebrated, and lucky San Diegans can see them perform in person locally as well as hearing their albums in their own living rooms. Please take advantage of this wonderful music.

August 16, 2010

One of the most creative endeavors in the arts world is an improvised solo played by an accomplished jazz musician. Over the years that solo has evolved from something that was basically an embellishment of the melody by adding a few notes to something extremely complex and sophisticated. Louis Armstrong is acknowledged as the first musician to turn the trumpet into a solo instrument. Later other instrumentalists followed in his footsteps. So instead of playing the melody exactly as it was written by one of the great American composers, Louis created his own version based on the same time and harmonic structure. The original jazz solo was basically an altered melody. Since the listening audience consciously or unconsciously knew the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic structure, the improvisor had to remain within that structure as he endeavored to spontaneously find a pattern of notes that fit, yet adding something new, something creative. Therefore, he had to think on his feet to create phrases or "licks" that fit the structure. He had to solve a puzzle in real time. If he messed up, if he hit a note that didn't fit the time or harmonic structure, sometimes called a "clinker", the audience knew it.

As the music evolved, musicians added more phrases to the vocabulary of jazz as they listened to Louis Armstrong and others invent more musical sequences that fit in the structure of tunes from the Great American Songbook by such composers as Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Harry Warren, Cole Porter and Richard Rogers. The composers themselves were creating new and challenging harmonic structures which then became challenges for jazz musicians to master. The 12 bar blues progression became a basic tune structure that was morphed into different varieties or flavors but with certain reference points that were well understood by both musician and audience. Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm" consisting of 24 bars became another basic structure that aspiring jazz musicians had to master. As time went on, other musicians imitated original players like Lous Armstrong absorbing his vocabulary into their solos much like a writer might use certain phrases and stylistic devices that he had picked up from his favorite author. Some of them became consolidators taking Armstrong's original work and attempting to execute it in a more polished style but adding nothing new. Then there were others who said "Well, I can add my own individuality to this art form; I can come up with new and original phrases." So they might take a tune like "On the Sunny Side of the Street" and, using the same structure that Armstrong used, attempt to play an improvised solo containing elements that were new and original, that had never been heard before, but yet were based on the same time and harmonic structures that had become well familiarized. Basically, the whole process came about because musicians as well as audiences got tired of hearing or playing the same solos based on well worn time and harmonic structures containing the same elements. What added interest was to hear or play something new, something different, something creative. So the art form progressed and evolved.

Then in the 1940s there was a true revolution. Players like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie took the art form to a whole new level. First, their virtuosity on their instruments increased to the level where people couldn't believe their ears. The range of the trumpet, for example, increased to the point that left trumpet players shaking their heads. The rapidity with which these innovators could spontaneously string notes together and come up with something that made sense and was esthetically appealing seemed incredible. At first they were playing the same tunes that Louis Armstrong had played but they were doing it in a style and manner that seemingly left Armstrong and players like him in the dust in terms of their technical facility and musical sophistication. They were running circles around contemporary musicians of the time that were still playing in Armstrong's style. They also evolved but did not basically change the basic harmonic structure of these same tunes by adding "passing" chords to the chord progression. So a twelve bar blues that had contained three or four chords, some of them lasting for a couple measures at a time, became in Charlie Parker's hands a harmonic progression containig 12 or 16 chords, none of them lasting more than half a measure. Consequently, the harmonic progression moved a lot faster. Of course this made improvizing a solo a lot more challenging. One had to think on his feet a lot faster. This style, which became known as bebop, required a level of instrumental competence, virtuosity and harmonic sophistication way beyond what musicians of the 1920s or 1930s had aspired to. Yet there were enough familiar reference points that the audience at least was not left completely behind although many listeners couldn't comprehend the revolutionary changes these musicians were making. Jazz went from a danceable music to a concert music and at the same time from popular music to an art form. The listening audience dropped off as bebop was too difficult for the average nonmusicain to comprehend and appreciate.

Although the basic time structure of the tunes bebop musicians improvised on remained the same, they added different rhythmic accents to their vocabulary that gave the music a new flavor and the name bebop. They moved the harmony around by adding new chords staying with the original tonality and based on western classical music which was based on the cycle of fifths. So a G7 chord always resolved to a C major chord. (G is a fifth above C). So anywhere there was a C major chord in the original progression they could add a G7 passing chord proceeding it. Taking this a step farther they could add a D minor seventh before the G7 and so on. Note that all these chords only contain notes which are within the C major scale thus preserving the tonality of C major.

The beboppers advanced the harmonic structure. Instead of adding chords proceeding around the cycle of fifths they substituted chords which proceeded downward by half steps. So instead of the progression D minor seventh to G dominant seventh to C major, they created the progression D minor seventh, D flat dominant seventh, C major seventh. There were still enough reference points so as to not make the original progression unrecognizable, but the new elements added interest, variety, tension and release. The more sophisticated prebop harmonic players like the piano player, Art Tatum, even improvised on the harmonic progression of the tune moving chords around with abandon especially playing solo but always coming back to enough reference points to stay within the original tune. Especially the time structures of the tunes remained constant. A 24 measure AABA tune remained a 24 measure tune. Typically, the A structure was 8 bars which was repeated twice; the B structure was also called the "bridge" and the last 8 bars repeated the original 8 bar structure of the tune. A player like Tatum might acknowledge the beginning of each 8 bar structure by hitting familiar chords and then take off on a flight of fancy until the next 8 bar structure began.

The beboppers, by changing the harmonic structure and adding half step downward chord pro-gressions changed the major tonality of the tune. Previously, if a tune was written in the key of C, a player need not do much more than master the C major scale in order to improvise on it. Now the beboppers were venturing temporarily into other keys and doing it at increasingly faster tempos. The harmonic sophistication required and the instrumental virtuosity had increased by leaps and bounds. However, they were doing all this still based on the same tunes the "swing" players had used. They also wrote different "heads" or melodies based on those same chord progressions. So a tune like "How High the Moon" became the Charlie Parker tune, "Ornithology",the name Ornithology referencing Parker's nickname, Bird. Les Paul and Mary Ford had a popular hit in 1951 with the tune "How High the Moon." "Ornithology" was a tune only appreciated by sophisticated jazz listeners, hence an art audience. It seems that the average listener didn't possess the musical sophistication to appreciate the revolutionary changes Parker, Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and others brought to the music. Monk's music was so original, nonconformist and quirky that only the true jazz aficionado appreciasted his genius.

In addition to the beboppers having to play at increased tempos, with a much expanded vocabulary (Charlie Parker had come up with a whole host of original "licks"), over an expanded range of their instruments and using much more difficult chord progressions, they still had to fit all their notes within a certain structured time and harmonic framework doing all this thinking on their feet in real time. It was still possible to hit a "clinker": and the sophisticated listener would know it. Fitting their phrases into this framework imposed a certain discipline and yet the musicians were still expected to be creative and original. Once musicians had absorbed the style of Charlie Parker, there followed a bunch of imitators and consolidators playing in Charlie Parker's style but adding nothing new. After a while, certain players tired of this and went on a quest to add something new to the art form. They endeavored to create their own original style so that a listener would recognize that it was they who were playing and not just a Charlie Parker imitator. New phrases or licks were invented that became the signatures or hallmarks of different players.

One of the things new generations tried to do was to change the structure of the tunes that Charlie Parker and others had created. Miles Davis came up with a bunch of tunes based on modal harmonies and recorded the all time jazz best seller, "Kind of Blue." This music while retaining the virtuosity of the beboppers introduced a less complex harmonic structure and so was more asscessible to the average unsophisticated listener. Miles also was involved with "Cool Jazz" which attempted to decrease the intensity and demands of hard core bebop and still come up with sophisticated and beautiful music. His collaborations with composer/arranger Gil Evans produced a series of recordings such as "Miles Ahead," "Porgy and Bess" and "Sketches of Spain" that featured sophisticated musical, almost symphonic arrangements with Miles adding plaintive, understated, understandable solos. Jazz Hot became Jazz Cool. Audiences loved it.

Jazz purists entered a new phase in which they attempted to "free up" the harmonic and time requirements of bebop by unstructuring the harmonic structure altogether. This was called "free jazz." In free jazz there was little or no harmonic structure and even little or no time structure. A musician was "free" to play whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted to play it. So while bebop was a very demanding and sophisticated music, free jazz made no demands on the musician at all. It was impossible to play a "clinker" and any musician without any knowledge whatsoever of even a C major scale could play it although, to be fair, he or she was expected to have some degree of virtuosity on his instrument. The only thinking on one's feet that was required was to string a bunch of notes together that made some sort of sense to the musician and the listening audience. The demands on the audience in one sense were drastically reduced in that a listener need not have any conscious or subconscious knowledge of harmony or the time structure of the piece being presented. The discipline that was required of the bebop player to be creative within a specified musical structure was completely abandoned. Part of the interest of jazz to me was how well a musican could play within a certain sophisticated time and harmonic structure and still be creative, still come up with something new. One did not expect a bebopper to come up with something completely new in every solo. One was happy to hear a new twist here, a new turn there while referencing the structure of the music and the phraseology of the vocabulary of other players that had proceeded him going all the way back to Louis Armstrong. Players also included whole phrases or "quotes" from other tunes which the sophisticated listener would instantly recognize. So listening to bebop and its variants required some knowledge of musical history on the part of the listener.

The bebop player had to put the pieces of a puzzle together spontaneously in real time in a way that made sense within the structure of the tune and still come up with something esthetically appealing to himself and the audience and also something interesting and creative. This put a lot of demands on the player and the listener. With free jazz none of these demands were made, not even playing in tune! The only demands made were that the player be a virtuoso on his instrument. The result, as far as I'm concerned, was a music that lost my interest because a lot of my interest in jazz was how well a player could fit the pieces of the puzzle together. A bebopper had to make all the pieces fit and come up with a finished product that resembled the picture that was revealed when a person put all the pieces of a puzzle together so that they all fit. A free jazz musician, after putting all the pieces of the puzzle on the table, could arrange them in any order whatsoever whether they fit together or not and whether they created any pattern or not. This turned a music that was at least comprehensible to a sophisticated listener into chaos. A music that had been built on the foundations of all the players that had attempted to create beautiful and comprehensible improvised solos in the past suddenly became music based upon ... well, nothing at all. The musicians were entirely free and there were no reference points for the audience to observe. There was no referencing of the great musicians of the past or the great tunes from The American Songbook.

Many musicians faced with the chaos of free jazz started walking back from it including more structured elements in their performances. Some used strict time structures while relatively free harmonic structures or included some passages of free playing interspersed with more structured passages. They started again to show an appreciation of the rich musical history that preceded them. They started to practive their scales and chords again. They started trying to come up with new licks, new ways of fitting the pieces of the puzzle together. Others, recoiling from the chaos of free jazz, went all out trying to win a commercial audience simplifying the music to the point of being uninteresting to the sophisticated listener but appealing to an audience with little or no appreciation of the musical elements of melody, harmony and time structure. Some tried to include classical or folk music elements while still retaining improvisation.

Ideally, an artist would have a lifetime to develop his or her art to higher degrees of sophistication. A listener would be able to follow and appreciate an artist's growth and development by comparing earlier and later recordings. The artist would bring the audience along with him as both developed their ears to a higher level. The musician, him or herself, would be on a quest to develop musically which is to say to get to the point where he or she is spontaneously creating new and interesting phraseology in the course of an improvised solo while encompassing enough reference points to make the music intelligible to a sophisticated listener. One of the few artists to accomplish anything resembling this ideal scenario was John Coltrane. Coltrane from his earliest days was an interesting and unusal player. His solos were different from those of the average consolidator of Charlie Parker's music. And then Coltrane went on from there to record "Giant Steps" which represented one of the true advances and departures from bebop that introduced a new harmonic structure into jazz. This music was so advanced that it took Coltrtane himself quite a while to master his own invention before he committed it to record. This was jazz at its best. All the elements of jazz history were there but there was a new inventiveness, a new creativity, a new intensity that went beyond what had come before. Coltrane went on to record another groundbreaking album, "My Favorite Things," which, while introducing no radically new advances to familiar elements, was recorded with such intensity and masterfullness that one appreciated the artist's musical development while at the same time hearing a tune which was part of the lexicon. Coltrane's last major album, "A Love Supreme" was hailed by some as another step in the advancement of a major jazz artist although it left me a little cold in terms of its repetitiveness and Coltrane's all out quest for stringing together novel musical phrases at any cost. It seemed to me that Coltrane's spiritual journey had put his musical quest on the back burner to some extent.

So where is jazz today? Jazz has morphed into so many variegated forms that there is no one centralized and focused understanding of what jazz is. It has dispersed into cultures all over the world, better appreciated in many others than in the land of its origin. There are many talented musicians out there all seeking enough of an audience so that they don't have to do a day job in addition to playing the music they love. This is hard to do and remain true to any conceptual calling of being an artist and to your own musical development. It seems that the more advanced and sophisticated you get as a musician, the more of the audience you lose. There are some who are trying to remain true to the musical tradition of Louis Armstrong, Art Tatum, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and John Coltrane. The greatest advocate of this tradition is the trumpet player and educator, Wynton Marsalis whose broadcasts on satellite radio of the history of jazz and promotion of the players that are out there "who can play" is much appreciated. Jazz as a true art form is still alive and well although the connection to making a living is nebulous. In the old days record companies such as Columbia would pick a Miles Davis to promote making him a major jazz musician in the process. Now since jazz has been more democratized, there are many players out there vying for a top slot but no major labels to promote them.

There are many others who have abandoned the jazz tradition altogether. They are playing jacuzzi jazz or some other variant which requires little artistic development or knowledge of the jazz tradition or of their instrument really since jazz is first and foremost an instrumental as opposed to a vocal music. Of course vocal music is more accessible than instrumental music and the success of the jazz artist Diana Krall and quite a few other female vocalists following in her footsteps attests to that. Jazz has also gone down many side alleys and entered many a cul de sac in an attempt to go all out to attract a listening audience by watering down the demands on the listener, to make the music more accessible to the listening audience. Most of these attempts are calculated corruptions and subversions of the jazz tradition in order to achieve commercial success. Keep in mind that jazz traditionalists are expected to not just play the music as it was played in some past era, but to remain true to the tradition of jazz esthetically while advancing the art form by coming up with something creative and new. However, jazz at its best is not expected to come up with something new with every jazz performance. Most jazz improvisation at its best is based on licks accumulated from the great players of the past or invented by the artist him or herself. All the sophisticated listener really wants or expects to hear is some new twist or turn which is truly creative and novel, something not heard before in quite the same way. It could be something as simple as the placement of an accent as Charlie Parker made clear. That's when the jazz aficionado says "Yeah!"

September 07, 2009

Here is my list of 25 jazz artists that represent my essential jazz collection and one I would recommend to any newcomer to jazz who wants to get a representative flavor of what the music is about as well as listen to the milestones of jazz' golden era. I have included albums which are essential to the history of jazz as an art form as well as jazz albums that have gained relative popular success, and, therefore, are considered to be more accessible. Also I have included albums which by their sheer beauty are a pleasure to listen to and also very accessible for the neophyte listener. Duke Ellington said, and I paraphrase, there are only two kinds of music: good and bad.

No list of 25 artists or albums can ever be exhaustive. Some of the omissions from this list are big band albums although I've included a few as well as some more on the orchestral side as opposed to the straight ahead big band style. I haven't included a lot of jazz vocalists but Ella Fitzgerald, Mahalia Jackson and Billie Holliday are nothing to sneeze at. Most of the albums are small groups, but this is where most of the action has been since the advent of the Charlie Parker-Dizzy Gillespie Quintet recordings of the mid 1940s.

In my humble opinion Charlie Parker was the greatest innovator and creative musician in jazz history. Most of so-called modern jazz flows from his creativity and inspiration. Unfortunately, he died at an early age (35) due to alcohol and drug abuse. Clifford Brown was the greatest trumpet player, in my opinion. His life was cut all too short by an automobile accident at the age of 24. Miles Davis was always trying to invent the next new thing and he was responsible for several of the seminal developments in jazz from the modal tunes of "Kind of Blue" which was also the all time best selling jazz album, to the chamber music of the "Birth of the Cool" album. His collaborations with Gil Evans produced "Porgy and Best", "Sketches of Spain" and "Miles Ahead." These albums used orchestral instruments such as french horns and oboes to get a distinctly different sound from the typical big band sax section. Several of the recommended albums, including Ella and Louis' "Porgy and Bess" and Roy Hargrove's "Moment to Moment", use full orchestral string sections.

Art Pepper's "Great Jazz Standards" is included because (a) it's a great album and (b) it introduces a novice listener to some of the essential jazz literature.

Another of my biases is that most of the recommended albums are from the post-swing era starting around 1945 although Art Tatum was definitely a player preceding that era as arguably was Duke Ellington and Billie Holliday in terms of her accompaniment. I don't include any "free" jazz because I don't consider it essential to jazz history nor do I personally enjoy it. Wynton Marsalis includes Ornette Coleman among his jazz essentials. I disagree with him there. I also don't include any "lite" jazz or "smooth" jazz as I consider it essentially watered down and diluted. There are enough albums in this list that should be accessible even to the jazz neophyte including some of the best selling albums of all time: Dave Brubeck's "Time Out," the aforementioned "KInd of Blue," Lee Morgan's "The Sidewinder," and John Coltrane's "My Favorite Things."

In addition there are albums of familiar content such as Oscar Peterson's "West Side Story," Ella and Louis' "Porgy and Bess," Dave Brubeck's "Dave Digs Disney" and Errol Garner's "Concert By The Sea" that are very accessible to anyone with even a modicum of musical let alone jazz appreciation. For sheer orchestral beauty I would include Ella and Louis' "Porgy and Bess," Roy Hargrove's "Moment to Moment," Duke Ellington's "Black, Brown and Beige with Mahalia Jackson," Miles Davis and Gil Evans' "Porgy and Bess," and George Russell's ambitious project, "New York, NY," which includes John Hendricks poetical musings.

The two vocal group albums considered here, "Silver and Voices" and "Sing a Song of Basie" deserve special mention, the former for the great writing of Horace Silver and the great trumpet solos of Tom Harrell as well as excellent group singing, the latter for the pioneering arrangements of John Hendricks who put words and vocal arrangements to great Count Basie instumental arrangements including all the horn solos.

Finally, a word about the greatest jazz composer of all time, Billy Strayhorn, whose music can be heard on Duke Ellington's "And His Mother Called Him Bill." In addition to writing Ellington's signature tune, "Take the A Train," he also wrote some of the most beautiful music of all time, jazz or otherwise, including "Lush Life (which he wrote when he was a teen living in the Pittsburg slums!)," "In a Sentimental Mood," "Upper Manhattan Medical Group," "Prelude to a Kiss," and "A Flower Is a Lovesome Things."

April 09, 2008

Freddie Hubbard was the preeminent jazz trumpet player of the 60s and 70s. His capabilities on the trumpet and for jazz improvization were boundless. He was a matador of the trumpet; great ideas, great technical facility. But in a demise of Shakespearean proportions, sadly, Freddie Hubbard can no longer play the trumpet. Although fronting an excellent band, Freddie couldn't get a legitimate note out at the Anthology club in San Diego last night. No breath control, no endurance, no improvising capability, terrible intonation. He played worse than a first grader on his first day of taking up the trumpet. It was pathetic. A man of such transcendant powers has lost it all. A total Greek tragedy. Why?

According to Freddie, about 10 years ago, he overdid it - too many gigs, too many high notes, too many endurance contests - and he blew his lip out. Freddie also admits that there were too many drugs or other negative lifestyle choices as well - "partying with the rock crowd". In any event, a few months off the horn and his lip should have recuperated so there's more to it than that. It's as if a portion of his brain is missing - that portion having to do with his at one time prodigious musical ability. My guess is he had a stroke or other brain damage. Charlie Parker, on his worst day, sounded infinitely better. Parker rued the release of his recording of Lover Man, but it was great compared to Freddie last night. Lester Young in his last recordings didn't finish a chorus but what he did play was great compared to this.

Hubbard traces his problem to a series of shows beginning in late 1992, when he flew to Europe on a gig with Slide Hampton's band, alongside fellow trumpeters Roy Hargrove and Jon Faddis. "I started playing high notes with Faddis and got carried away," Hubbard says seriously, sitting at a wooden desk in his office/practice room at home. "High notes aren't my forte. I came back, went to Philly and played with some guys without warming up. That's when my top lip popped. Then I went to New York and played the Blue Note for a week. That's when I should have stopped cold."

But Hubbard didn't stop there. Instead, he went back to Europe for a big band date, and soon after realized his lip had become infected. When he returned to Los Angeles, a doctor performed a biopsy, fearing cancer. "I said to myself, 'Man, I'm going to get a day job. This is terrible.'"

Hubbard says, adding also that he was drinking too much and partying with "the rock crowd." In addition, he conceded that he missed several gigs due to these problems.

Freddie lived large for a long time, but now he's fallen like an aging warrior. It's bound to happen to all of us sooner or later. But most of us don't attain the heights Freddie attained. So the fall is not as far or as drastic. When he first came to New York as a young man, his only rival on the trumpet was Lee Morgan.

Much has been made of the so-called rivalry between Hubbard and the late Lee Morgan during those heady New York years. But Hubbard sets the record straight.

"Lee was the only young cat that scared me when he played," he says. "he had so much fire and natural feeling. I had more technique, but he had that feeling. People seemed to like him more than they liked me at the beginning. But we'd follow each other around, buy sports cars and chase the same chicks. It was a different period then. Today, it's all business."

Well, at least, Freddie had the luck not to have wound up like Lee Morgan did - shot dead by a jealous lover.

I loved Freddie's recording with Eric Dolphy: "Outward Bound." It was "free" for its day. When Freddie hit and sustained a high F in the middle of an improvised chorus, I was in awe as a trumpet player. His signature lip trills and repeated, cyclical motifs on Herbie Hancock's "Maiden Voyage" and "Empyrean Isles" had other trumpet players trying to imitate him. I even loved his more commercial records for CTI such as "First Light," my favorite make-out music. So to hear Freddie play last night was only an occasion for regret. Age alone doesn't explain it. Doc Cheatham and others have played tolerably well into their 80s. Barbara Walters interviewed 101 year old trumpet player, "Rosie" Ross who still plays professionally! Oscar Peterson still played OK even after his stroke and until he died although not with his former proficiency. You can see and hear Freddie in better days on YouTube here.

So why is Freddie Hubbard still playing and how does he even get gigs? The answer to the first question is that he needs the money. In an interview, he said that he can't make it financially living off the residuals from the over 300 records and CDs he's made. He gets gigs based mainly on his legendary status as a jazz musician. But he should have hung it up and rested on his laurels long ago. I guess the lesson here is that nothing lasts forever, and you can't take for granted any talent, ability or asset. It can all be taken away. I'm reminded of Shelley's poem, Ozymandias:

I met a traveller from an antique landWho said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert. Near them on the sand,Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frownAnd wrinkled lip and sneer of cold commandTell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.And on the pedestal these words appear:"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"Nothing beside remains: round the decayOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,The lone and level sands stretch far away.

December 27, 2007

It's become a Christmas Eve tradition: Peter Sprague's annual free concert at 15th Street in Ould Del Mar, a place near and dear to my heart because it was my first impression of California when I came here in 1963. Every year since Peter and his brother Tripp were wee little lads, growing up in this paradise, they set up their music stands, opened their guitar cases and played music for the assembled holiday throngs for nickels, dimes and quarters on the sidewalk in front of the Earth Song book store. Now they have moved to the outdoor amphitheatre near the Inn l'Auberge just across the way. This concert is a family and friends affair with father Hall Sprague on bongos, little Kate Sprague (Tripp's daughter) and Kylie Sprague (Peter's daughter) singing. The highlight of the afternoon concert was the Benedetti girls, Regina and Julia, whose guitar playing father, Fred, a full time music professor at Grossmont College, is equally at home with jazz or classical. They can be regularly heard at the Aviara resort in Carlsbad.

The band included Gunner Biggs, bass; Tripp Sprague, saxophone and flute; Dylan Savage, drums. Singers Coral Macfarland-Thuett, Allison Tucker and Lisa Hightower lit up the proceedings. A harp and mandolin duo, the Wrong Trousers, added to the festivities. Mark Lessman sat in on saxophone and a blues harmonica playing architect got everyone jumping. There was a lot of samba and Brazilian music which my significant other, Judy, really loves. She is becoming a huge fan of Peter's. This music is really accessible and infectious, a blessed alternative to pop/rock, rap or whatever other stuff is floating over the airwaves these days. It's a treat to hear singing in languages other than English and the vibes conjured up from Brazilian and other cultures. One of my favorite singers, Karrin Allyson has an album, "From Paris to Rio," on which she sings in Portuguese and French. It would be good to hear more of the French vibe as in Edith Piaf's "La Vie En Rose" or "Ne Me Quitte Pas." If Coral sang these songs with half as much conviction as she conveys in the Latin tinged numbers, it would be sensational! Harmonica and accordion sometimes add a distinctly different cultural ambiance - an off the beaten track vibe - as on the album "Chez Toots" by Toots Thielemans.

Peter deserves a lot of credit not only for adding greatly to the cultural edification of San Diego County but also for mentoring and encouraging younger (and older) musicians. At his Spragueland production studio, he produces CD albums for a lot of these folks and in general has built up a network of relationships that has extended from family out into the community. This is truly peace on earth, goodwill towards men (and women). If only the larger world would emulate what Peter and the other musicians have accomplished in microcosm, the world would be more representative of the wishes of the dude whose birthday we celebrate this time of year! Peter has added a lot more to the community as a local musician than many more famous musicians that live here but aren't as active and involved except for an occasional concert. Peter is always searching for new sonic avenues and his music is both high quality and eminently approachable. A musician needs to be versatile these days playing in a variety of musical situations and with a variety of different groups. Peter has created a multi-faceted array of sonic situations that should encompass the vast majority of musical palates. On this particular sunny California Christmas Eve, the audience couldn't get enough of the warm vibes emanating from this simpatico group.

When I first arrived in California, it was a rainy, dark September evening. I had driven cross country from Atlanta just having finished eight straight quarters at Georgia Tech. I was on my way to Palo Alto where I was in for three more quarters at Stanford before my first summer break. I was trying to find downtown San Diego; I thought surely a major street like El Cajon Blvd would take me to it, but after driving back and forth, never actually finding San Diego, I pulled over in North Park and slept in my car. The next day I actually looked at a map and turned north from I-8 onto Highway 101. (There was no I-5, no I-15, no I-805 in those days.) When I got to Del Mar, the sun came out. I pulled over into the gas station on the corner of 15th Street where the flower shop is today, went into the rest room and cleaned up. Then I headed for the coffee shop next door (where Bank of America is now). Before I went in to have breakfast, I looked out over the old tudor Shakepearian inn on the northwest corner of 15th Street (that has been replaced by the Inn l'Auberge) toward the blue Pacific. I took a deep breath of fresh air, felt the sunshine and rejoiced in my first impression of California. Little did I know at the time that I would be living here a few blocks up 15th Street a few years later in a little shack I rented for $40. a month. Today Del Mar is strictly a high rent district but in those days it was still a funky little town.

In addition to his website, petersprague.com, Peter has a website complete with shopping cart, Actual Proof, from which you can access CDs and books as well as download MP3s.

December 10, 2007

Three jazz events in one week! I'm getting the holidays off to a good start. First there was Jazz in the Park, the monthly event at the San Diego Museum of Art. This group featured Joe LaBarbera on drums, Bill Cunliffe on piano, Tom Warrington, bass and Larry Koonse, guitar. These guys actually are willing to frequently drive down here from LA to perform at the Museum. Joe LaBarbera is practically the house drummer, and a great drummer at that. It's hard to believe that he played with the late, great Bill Evans. His performance exemplified taste and class to the extreme. Bill Cunliffe is one of my favorite pianists. Again taste and class. I'm starting to really dig Tom Warrington's bass playing. He had one solo that blew me away. Larry Koonse, although a good guitarist, didn't leave me with any memorable impresssions. They delved into the Christmas music bag to some extent without pandering to the genre. These monthly concerts are suitable for us old fogeys since they start at 5:30 PM and are over by 7:30. No need to pub crawl to the wee small hours to hear good jazz! It pays to be a San Diegan and live downtown or you'd never be able to get there by 5:30. But at $18.00 a shot (more for non-members) it ain't cheap either. This week took its toll on the old exchequer!

Thursday night I headed down to Anthology, a newly opened jazz (partly) club in Little Italy that represents state of the art technology and 21st century chic. Ahmad Jamal was there, a man that I'd never seen live before and one of the old guard still holding forth in his seventies. I can go peacefully now since I've heard Ahmad Jamal play Poinciana live! Now I'm telling you Anthology ain't cheap either. Be prepared to part with some bucks when you go there. I sat at the bar and drank Coors Lights at $5.00 a pop. Jeez, I could have gotten a whole case at Costco for what two beers cost me. But the ambiance is superb. There are HDTV screens everywhere, and the camera man is part of the show. What a priceless experience to see close-ups of Ahmad's hands as they ripple up and down the keyboard. Did I say that a hamburger was $19.00? Ouch!! OK, OK it was a Koby burger. Oh, and the cover was $30.00 just to get in. It was well worth it though. I attended the 7:30 PM show and was home by 9 o'clock. Again perfect for old fogeys pretending to be young, hip and urban.

I could not resist going down to Anthology again Sunday night with my significant other, Judy. The draw was No Cover Charge for the 5:30 PM show featuring the Moutin brothers with Rick Margitza on tenor sax. So we decided to splurge on dinner in lieu of the cover charge. And a great dinner it was. We were attended to very attentively by a myriad of black clad waiters, waitreses, hostesses and maitre d's. Ah, the good life. La dolce vita. But it didn't come cheap! We wined and dined with all the young, hip, urban professionals and the mega gazillionaires fresh off their yachts docked in San Diego Harbor marinas, having parked the van a block away on India street in the commercial parking (yellow) zone. What!! It's perfectly legal after 6 o'clock and we had 20 minutes there as a commercial vehicle anyway. We mingled with the Mercedes and Porsche driving crowd whose master bedroom closets, filled with clothes and dozens of pairs of shoes, are as big as our little studio apartment in downtown San Diego. But then we only had a five minute commute and it took them 30-45 minutes to drive home on vehicle clogged freeways. Ah, the good life! Little did they know we had arrived in a van with ladders on top. Ohhhh!

But let's talk about the Moutin brothers - Francois on bass and Louis on drums. They are identical twins from France and seemed to have that telepathic empathy and interconnectedness that only twins do. Ahhh! La musique, toute la musique! These guys are really good. Intensity to the max. Pierre de Bethmann is on piano. They're all fantastic musicians. And their ensemble sounds really churned with that big bass swirling on the bottom. They played a long set as we ate dinner, and then packed up their instruments to make way for the next event. It was all over and we were home by 7:30, another great night out for old fogeys! I figured I had spent about $200. in one week on live jazz in San Diego, but it was worth it. Since we don't go to Panda Express and Coco's any more on a regular basis, we can save up our money and spend it on more high class entertainment once in a while.

August 17, 2007

Saturday, August 11, trumpeter Chris Botti performed at Embarcadero Marina Park with the San Diego Symphony under the stars in their Summer Pops series, and Tuesday, August 14, the Winard Harper Sextet performed at the Saville Theatre at San Diego City College as part of their Jazz Live series simultaneously broadcast over KSDS FM. These performances represented totally different approaches to and perspectives on the concept of jazz. On the one hand, Chris Botti, who is an excellent trumpeter, mainly played a role of contributing solo trumpet to an overall lush and romantic atmosphere conjured up by the symphony arrangements. Winard Harper represented the African-American jazz tradition started by Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington and continued with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. His group reminded me of the late Art Blakey and the many versions of the Jazz Messengers. Winard is central to the evolution of the tradition of jazz as exemplified by these people: burning creative energy, furious self-expression, respect for the tradition but each interpreting it from his own perspective and as a more or less new arrival on the scene.

The San Diego Symphony did an opening set without Chris Botti consisting of arrangements of Cole Porter compositions. They might as well have skipped the opening set. People were there to see Chris Botti, not listen to a bunch of lame arrangements and insipid interpretations which didn't do justice to Cole Porter, my favorite American songbook composer. Calling Nelson Riddle... When Chris came on, he played a couple of tunes to establish his credentials as a trumpeter of considerable technique with a beautiful, mellow sound before he started chatting with the audience. Once he did start chatting, he told us practically his whole life story which was actually pretty interesting. There was the bit where he got a call to play with Frank Sinatra and Frank told him, "Nice solo, kid." This led to visions of hanging with the Chairman which, after some openers, came to no avail when Frank's manager told him, "Don't ever bother Mr. Sinatra again."

Winard opened with Duke Ellington's "In a Sentimental Mood." Harper is one of the best jazz drummers playing today for my money. Incidentally, the concert was free for KSDS members of which I am one, but if I had to pay I would. Winard has my respect not only for being a great drummer but also for being a bandleader, not an easy feat in today's market. Inspired by Billy Higgins and Lee Morgan, they ripped into a tune that sounded so contemporary I was sure Winard had written it himself. It turned out to be a Charlie Parker tune. Since Parker died in 1955, it had to have been written over 50 years ago, yet so vital was the inspiration that, as so much of Charlie Parker's music is, it was timeless. Unfortunately, I didn't get the name of the tune, and I thought I had heard all of Parker's oeuvre, as I'm a Parker aficionado, but I guess not. Pianist Sean Higgins, the token white guy of the group, contributed a number of impassioned solos as did the effervescent and uncontainable Harper. African pecussionist, Alioune Faye, elevated the role of rhythym to an even higher level.

Chris Botti had an excellent small band with him that played within the context of the larger Symphony. Chris had played with Sting and he seems to have adopted his hairdo. He even looks something like him, and appearance seemed to be a well thought out component of the entire presentation. Botti recounted how impressed he was with Miles Davis' mellow, romantic tone and he set out to emulate him rather than the more frantic beboppers. He played a number from Davis' "Kind of Blue" album, Flamenco Sketches. Chris' emphasis was on tonal beauty and creating a lush atmosphere rather than creative improvisation, and, therefore, I wouldn't place Botti, although a formidable trumpet player, in the mainstream of the jazz tradition. I wouldn't call him a smooth jazzer either because from a larger musical perspective, this was beautiful music. He didn't mention Chet Baker, but I see him as also having been influenced by him since Chet emphasized the romantic ballads and always had a chick hanging on him on his album covers. Botti has obviously traded fire and complexity for accessibility and, I'm sure, there are many people out there who are grateful for his CDs as a high class make out accompaniment.

Winard had the traditional trumpet/tenor saxophone front line played by Josh Evans and Stacy Dillars, respectively. Not yet fully fledged, these young men, nevertheless, contributed their spirit and energy to the proceedings. Bobby Timmons' "Moanin" turned out to be an amenable vehicle for the front line. The star, however, was Winard who alternately drove and sheparded the band and then unleashed meticulous, paroxysms of creative, rhythmic energy while still remaining true to the tradition. Not a pounder or a basher, Winard's solos were complex and full of finesse without being overly loud or obtrusive. He seems to combine the energy of Elvin Jones, the tastefullness of Billy Higgins and the band driving chops of Art Blakey. His career path has him committed to the jazz tradition composed of three parts improvisation, two parts technique and four parts creative self-expression.

Chris Botti's career path consists of one part hip appearance, one part presentation, two parts trumpet technique, one part personality and one part good taste in selecting beautiful arrangements. His introducer noted that he was a Columbia recording artist. Columbia has a reputation for only selecting artists they think can make money for the label. At any time they will only bet on one or two jazz trumpet players. They bet on Miles Davis, and he came through for them. Right now it seems to be Wynton Marsalis and Chris Botti. To say that Botti is making and probably will make a lot of money while Harper struggles to keep a band together would be stating the obvious. Accessibility, romanticism and Columbia promotion will always trump purity of art form and creative improvisation, unfortunately. Some would say the jazz tradition as exemplified by Winard Harper is passe, but, au contraire, the forms of traditional jazz, the music of Parker, Ellington, Mingus, Monk et al will be played 200 years from now just as Mozart's music is played today, and it will be as fresh then as the abilities and inventiveness of future musicians can make it. But let us hope also that the likes of Chris Botti, Dianna Krall and other accessible but authentic musicians will take over from Kenny G and the smooth, jacuzzi jazz crowd. If folks want accessible as opposed to artistic then at least let them have authentic rather than kitsch.

May 13, 2006

Last night Peter Sprague, guitar, performed at Dizzy's Club in San Diego in a group featuring the vocals of Leonard Patton in a Tribute to Stevie Wonder. A biographical note about Leonard Patton taken off Peter Sprague's website can be found here. All the music was Stevie Wonder's, and Peter did all the arrangements, a herculean task. Stevie is a pop music phenomenon having churned out hit after hit such as "Boogie on Reggae Woman," "I Was Made to Love Her," "Living for the City," "You Are the Sunshine of my Life," "I Wish," "Sir Duke," and my favorite, "Isn't She Lovely" in honor of Stevie's baby daughter. More importantly, Stevie's music is loved by jazz aficionados as his music has a meaning and depth not always found in pop music. It's music that will last the test of time, for sure.

The key to this night's performances were the arrangements by Peter Sprague. Whether it was a written out, improvised line played in unison by saxophone and guitar or an interjected, snake charmerish, promordial theme from John Coltrane's "Resolution," this was excellent music with great arrangements and popular appeal, as evidenced by the enthusiastic reception by young people from Bishop's School who were much in attendance, and it flowed effortlessly from these top-notch performers. Leonard's voice carried much of the vocal chores, and he was in fine form more than doing justice to Stevie's fine compositions. The back-up singers, Rebecca Jade and Eric Lige added a harmonic depth and visual appeal that gave this music an immediacy and direct human connection. Tripp Sprague honked, screamed and wailed on tenor saxophone and, when called for, executed ensemble parts with precision. Pianist Josh Nelson soloed well while bassist Bob Magnusson and drummer Dave Anderson immersed themselves in solid ensemble work.

I've never heard Peter sound better on guitar. His solo work was full-bodied and powerful. I could clearly hear every note, and every note certainly deserved to be heard. Peter had his amp up where it belonged, and, as the leader, kept the group grounded. The duet with just Leonard's voice and Peter's guitar was exquisite!

Peter is the epitome of versatility. Last week he was playing for Bob Magnusson's CD release party. Last night he did a Stevie Wonder tribute gig. But Peter is not only a great guitar player. As mentioned earlier, he did all the arrangements and this is a prodigious amount of work.

Not only that, but Peter is ubiquitous in his collaborations with different kinds of musicians in every configuration from solo guitar to symphony, playing every kind of music from Bach to Be-bop. Tonight rock and roll ala Stevie Wonder was on the menu. His very ubiquitousness though is made possible by Peter's behind the scenes arranging and producing efforts in order to bring these various projects to fruition. Each one is special and, therefore, each gig is special and unique. Too many jazz musicians approach a gig as a blowing session with a standard format. Play the head, improvised choruses all around, trade 8s with the drummer, play the head again and out. Not Peter! So you know you're always in for a treat because Peter has done his homework!

He has a little help though from his musical assistant: Finale. Peter was an early adapter of the Macintosh computer and music software that makes his prodigious output of different projects and arrangements possible. The tools that today's musicians have at their disposal also include Sibelius. I'm sure that the various parts the musicians read from were produced with a little help from Finale or Sibelius. Melody and harmony can be played into the computer on guitar and the software can do the grunt work of the arrangement which then can be tweaked and finally multiple parts can be printed out with the push of a button. Peter also makes good use of the internet, having put together an excellent website, and uses email newsletters to inform his fans of upcoming concerts. So you see folks there's a lot more to it then simply learning to play an instrument well. Peter covers all the bases, and that's why his versatility leads to his ubiquitousness.

Note to Peter: Get your music played on Cox Cable channel 930, the jazz channel. Why? This is really the channel for Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition. I have heard some great musicians on there who I had never heard of before, and can instantly tell who they are because the information is displayed on screen as well as biographical backgrounds. I can then go to the computer and Google or Amazon them and put the album on my wish list. I've discovered some excellent musicians this way.

With FM radio, unfortunately, too many times after hearing a great piece of music, it's impossible to identify who performed it especially if the DJ doesn't come on and tell you or if an airplane happens to fly over when the DJ mentions the name. With digital media you have the artist's name available for the full length of the song. This applys to XM and Sirius satellite-based radio as well. You only have to look down at your car radio to get the artist's name. This has done more to make lesser known artists known to wider audiences than any other recent development. In the old days record companies promoted artists. In the digital age, with jazz being such a small percentage of the overall market, each artist is responsible for his or her own promotion as you know, and the digital media like jazz-only TV channels and satellite radio are a help in this respect.

May 04, 2006

There was a CD release party for Bob Magnusson last night as part of the Jazz in the Park Series. Liquid Lines is the name of the CD, and the group including Bob on bass, Randy Porter on piano, Peter Sprague, guitar, Tripp Sprague, reeds and Duncan Moore, drums, performed several numbers from the CD which was on sale in the lobby and a couple of standards. One of the stalwarts of the San Diego jazz scene, Bob has played with all the greats in jazz and pop including Buddy Rich, Sarah Vaughan, Art Pepper, Art Farmer, Benny Golson, Linda Ronstadt and Madonna!

This group has been playing together for so long in various configurations that it's more like a band of brothers than a group of musicians, and the Spragues and Bob share an avocation for surfing that ties them together even more. The CD, Liquid Lines, is inspired by surfing from Del Mar to Point Loma and points beyond. In general the musicianship was excellent with the empathy and interplay almost telepathic. This is how jazz should be played: with a group of friends and among friends. Bob's extensive family including, wife, mother, 3 daughters and 7 grandchildren were in attendance.

An Aside: Judy and I were late getting to the concert as usual since I have to pick up Judy in La Mesa at 5 PM when she gets off work, and drive to Balboa Park. (That's her on the right.) We munched down our Subway sandwich on I-8, parked and were walking toward the San Diego Museum of Art. Judy expressed regret that we would be late again. I said, "Not to worry. No self-respecting jazz musician ever starts a concert earlier than 10 minutes late so we've got plenty of time." Luckily, I'm on Holly Hofmann's reservation list or we wouldn't have gotten in. It was a sold out crowd. The ushers told us, much to Judy's chagrin, that we would never find two seats together so we worked on finding Judy a seat. That accomplished, I headed further down front when a woman stood up front and center and motioned she had two seats available. I waved to Judy, and we ended up having two seats together, the best seats in the house, thanks to, as it turned out, Bob's wife! I got to see Bob's Grandchildren as one after another they squirmed around on Grandma's lap, and what cute kids they are too! What a fortunate man to have such a beautiful family and to have spent his life in such a beautiful locale and earned his living doing something that's so rewarding and such fun! All this and surfing too. Heaven couldn't be much better.

Back to the Concert: They started out with "Afternoon at First Point," a tune I really liked. Randy Porter, on piano, is a total virtuoso with an excellent jazz feel and full of surprises. There is only one thing though. Randy, lose the white shirt! It seemed like the glare off an iceberg, and at times had me reaching for UV protection! It made me appreciate more the darker, muted and understated threads the others were wearing! "Aqua Reflections" set a pensive mood, another excellent tune!

Most of the tunes were written by Bob, but they "covered" "I Cover the Waterfront." I felt the medium up groove was a little too fast. This is really a singer's tune, and, as sung by Billie Holliday, is a love song with a yearning, wistful quality. I didn't feel the arrangement captured the essence of the tune. Part of the homework of a jazz musician is listening to the legacy from the past and building on that. It seemed like this tune came right out of the Fake Book. They all played good, however.

"Reef Dance" went over well. Another surfing inspired tune. Brother Tripp was "out front" as the only hornman on the gig, and did a great job on tenor sax, flute and especially his harmonica solo on the last tune of the night. In general the sound system was adjusted well except I thought that Peter Sprague's guitar could have been brought up more. Peter's solo spots were great, but I couldn't hear him all that well in the ensemble work. The ensemble work, however, was the highlight of the evening. Intricate, crisp and clear - this was music of the highest calibre. I can't say enough about Duncan Moore's drumming. He's always there interacting but unobtrusively so. He has Big Ears! The sound of his drum kit, the micing of the drums and the guy playing them - all I can do is to agree with Cal Worthington - you can't beat that! His cymbal work behind Bob's bass, a tick tick rather than a ting ting, was perfectly suited and articulated.

Bob shared the spotlight on his special evening with Oscar Castro-Neves who performed Antonio Carlos Jobim's tune, "The Waters of March." Here is a tune that at first sight seems like just a jumble of words with not much of a melody, but the effect is hypnotic. This tune just grows on you. Oscar did a great solo turn.

After the break, they did more tunes from the CD. They maintained the high quality both of composition and performance of the first half. One quibble is that I found the tune, "The Search, the Discovery," a little long on search and a little short on discovery. The highlight of the second set, no doubt, was Key Largo sung by Coral MacFarland Thuet. Peter Sprague did an excellent solo intro, and Coral, as is her wont, captured the spirit and essence of the tune. In my opinion she is in the top rank of jazz singers because, like Billie Holliday and Frank Sinatra, she doesn't need 10 grace notes to embellish every note of the melody. Instead, she feels the tune, what the composer had in mind, adds her life experience to it, and communicates that effortlessly to the audience.

The last tune of the evening, "Newbreak," paid homage to another surfing spot off Sunset Cliffs, and featured the aforementioned wonderful harmonica work of Brother Tripp.

As we were leaving, Judy said to me, "I usually don't like originals, but these were all so good." I'm sure the audience, as evidenced by their enthusiastic response, agreed. I think it was typical of Bob Magnusson that he didn't hog the spotlight, featured other artists like Oscar Castro-Neves and Coral Thuet, honored his Mom and other family members and even introduced some of his surfing buddies and webmaster! But the music more than spoke for itself. This group deserves wider than local recognition, and we are indeed fortunate to have Bob as a superlative member of the San Diego jazz scene. Long may his flag continue to wave! Happy surfing!

April 17, 2006

Highlights in Jazz, New York City's oldest running concert series held a jam session April 6, 2006 in the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. Jack Kleinsinger is the producer of these events. The line-up for this evening was David "Fathead" Newman and Ernie Watts, tenor saxes; Lew Soloff, trumpet; Steve Turre, trombone; Mulgrew Miller, piano; Ray Drummond, bass; and Jimmy Cobb, drums.

I attended with my friends, Renee and Helen, and sat in the front row as usual when I attend with these ladies! The group started off with Dizzy Gillespie's "A Night in Tunesia." Many a good lick was blown by all. Ernie Watts was the only LA based musician there and his performance was most impressive tossing off complex figures with ease. I would have liked to hear more from Fathead, but his sound was softer and quieter, and as usual in these types of formats, the more extroverted players took over.

Ernie Watts and Lew Soloff did a couple of numbers in a quintet format. I remember Lew from his high note solo on the Blood, Sweat and Tears recording of "Spinning Wheel." I admire his facility with the horn, and he gives it his all, but idea wise, there are a lot of New York based cats that can outdo him such as Brian Lynch, Ryan Kisor and Roy Hargrove. Roy loves jam sessions so he should be a natural for one of Jack's "Highlights."

Steve Turre had a featured spin. Of course he brought out his conch shells and gave them a work-out. Helen didn't care too much for Steve's conch shell playing. I guess she thought it was too much of a gimic which, for all intents and purposes, it is. Steve is a consistent poll winner and a consummate showman, but personally I prefer the trombone work of John Fedchock whose New York Big Band has made some excellent recordings. Steve also has his own big band consisting of all conch shell players called Sanctified Shells.

A young trombonist, Roland..., was presented with a $1000. prize by Jack and performed a nice plungered and muted version of "My Romance." He was also a student of Steve's. The most impressive performance of the evening for me was a duet by Mulgrew Miller and Ray Drummond, "Sweet and Lovely." They had outstanding empathy. In fact Ray's eyes were glued on Mulgrew for the entire tune. I don't think he blinked once! Along with Jimmy Cobb, this rhythm section was outstanding the entire evening!

The night ended as it had begun with another tune by Dizzy Gillespie, "Manteca." I had to admire Lew's playing on this one. Anyone who can play Dizzy's part on "Manteca", ...well...my hat's off to him! All in all another successful outing by Jack Kleinsinger and the longest running jazz series in New York City.

After saying good-bye to Helen and Renee, I used my fun pass for the last time and took the C train back to Port Authority Bus Terminal where I caught the bus for the North Bergen Park Ride lot and picked up my rental car. Luckily I had my XM Roady with me so I could listen to jazz all the way home!

April 16, 2006

Nnenna Freelon performed a long set with no intermission at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, Friday, April 7, 2006. The concert was free and open to the public which began assembling more than an hour prior to concert time. Needless to say, it was standing room only. This was a good gig for Freelon who was at the college on a McCormack Residency which has hosted jazz musician Joshua Redman and poet Robert Pinsky among others. This concert was the culmination of Nnenna's residency.

Freelon is a six-time Grammy Award nominee in two jazz vocal categories. Beautiful to look at, this mother of three has a very dramatic flair in addition to her vocal talents. Her onstage movements and facial expressions amounted at times to acting and dancing skills. She started off in a Frank Sinatra bag with "All or Nothing at All." Her back-up group was superb with percussionist Beverly Botsford rising to the level of co-front liner at times. Normally averse to percussionists, I was totally captivated by Botsford's performance. From her score of instruments she always chose just the right one for just the right accent dancing among them like an antediluvian elf.

Nnenna spent much of her time honoring the memory of Billie Holliday, conjuring up her spirit and life with a running commentary. She performed Billie's compositions "God Bless the Child" as well as the number after which Billie had to leave the stage, "Strange Fruit." Freelon recorded "Blueprint of a Lady" on Concord Records in 2005 so Lady Day's legacy is a major focus of her work.

Some of her approach was reminiscent of Cassandra Wilson as she deconstructed melody, harmony and rhythm and then reconstructed these elements into a unique blend. Only the lyrics stayed the same. Drummer Kinah Boto laid down reggae, hip-hop and funk beats, but hardly any swinging 4/4. Pianist McCune and bassist Batchelor had some good solos along the way. About the only song sung straight was the spiritual, "There is a Balm in Gilead" done with just voice and piano.

She sang the ultimate My-Man-Done-Me-Wrong song, "Don't Explain," sounding much like Nancy Wilson who specialized in that genre with songs such as "Guess Who I Saw Today." Nancy is known for her precise diction and extended sibilants, and Nnenna followed in her footsteps in that regard.

After the finale, "All of Me," the very appreciative audience brought her back for an encore featuring Botsford wailing on congas. From smoky joints to prestigious colleges, jazz has come a long way. Not intimidated at all by the "hallowed halls," Nnenna dispelled whatever vestiges of staidness might have remained at Skidmore. It was nice of the Dean to open the concert to the public, and I felt it was well worth the drive in the rain up the New York Thruway from New Paltz where I started and ended the day.

February 27, 2006

Last night guitarist Peter Sprague performed at the Athenaeum Studio in a two guitar format featuring Howard Alden on 7 string guitar. On bass and drums, respectively, were staunch allies Bob Magnusson and Jim Plank. The set started with the Harold Arlen tune, "My Shining Hour" from the movie "The Sky's the Limit." In my opinion tune selection is half the battle, and Peter did a magnificent job in selecting the tunes that were played this evening. You can't beat The Great American Songbook especially when augmented with Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker, and the selection of tunes this night was wonderful and covered all the bases. For this alone the concert was first rate, top notch, 5 stars. But then the playing was pretty spectacular too!

Howard Alden was sitting in for Mundell Lowe, the great guitarist, who couldn't make it on account of illness. Mundell was one of the Mississppi contingent of be-boppers who along with Mose Allison ("I'm sitting down here on Parchmon Farm") migrated to New York City and absorbed the lessons of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in the aftermath of WW II. Mundell was musical director of the Monterey Jazz Festival for many years, a fact that the concert notes failed to mention. He was one of the first to have an integrated group, a fact worthy of note for a southern musician. As a friend of Mundell's, I wish him a speedy recovery.

What a joy it was to be introduced to the music of Howard Alden! The two guitarists were a contrast, but complemented each other well. Howard has a more traditional, focused jazz oriented sound than does Peter maybe as a result of moving to New York City as a young man, while Peter embodies and encapsulates the southern California, Del Mar surf's up sound with hints of Eastern mysticism, incense and candles. His sound is spacier and less hard edge. He's not totally in LaLa land, however, as he can dig in if he wants to. So it was a contrast between the Big Apple sound and the Del Mar surf sound. Both are equally valid. Peter loves the Spanish sounds - the sambas, flamencos and bossa novas and that was reflected in the 3 Antonio Carlos Jobim tunes - Desafinado, Wave and Felicidad. Another remarkable composer and wise tune selections.

Howard has studied with 7 string guitarist George Van Eps, and his solo turn demonstrated how the low A string can give the guitar a fuller lower register. Both guitarists were relaxed and enjoying themselves and each other's playing. Some of the other great tunes and composers featured were "You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To," by Cole Porter, "Prelude to a Kiss," by Duke Ellington, "It Could Happen to You," by Jimmy Van Heusen, "You Don't Know What Love Is," by Don Raye and "It's You or No One," by Jules Styne. The latter two aren't as well known as the others, but what wonderful music! Bassist Bob Magnusson played the melody arco on "You Don't Know..." His playing is simply superb. One of the few bassists that can carry the melody, and also play Charlie Parker inspired solos, the group interaction among the three string players was the highlight of the evening. The group was at it's best when the bass was an equal partner with the guitars which tended to be more the case as the evening progressed.

Drummer Jim Plank, unfortunately, played a more Connie Kaye-ish role as strict timekeeper. He's been a fixture on the jazz and symphony scene for many years. Although he had some good solo spots, he was not fully integrated into the group sound. The essence of unobtrusiveness, I think Jim needs to be more aggressive and use the sticks more. Somehow the brushes didn't get the job done. He could have been more interactive without overpowering the room. And although I'm no expert on drum kits, the sound of his set-up didn't really turn me on. If I closed my eyes and just listened to the drums, it sounded like a businessman's bounce. Maybe that's what playing with the symphony too long does to you. I don't know.

It made my evening when they played Charlie Parker's "Bloomdido," with a remarkable introduction. In general, great interplay between the guitarists throughout. They had a great groove on "You'd Be So Nice..." and a great sound on "You Don't Know...," the high points of the concert for me. All in all one of the best nights out for music in a long time. I can't stress enough how much I appreciated the tune selection. Great artists know this is half the battle. Mercifully, there were no originals, not that Peter isn't a good composer which he is, but when you are dealing with the likes of Ellington, Jobim, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, Charlie Parker and Jimmy Van Heusen, it's pretty hard to come up with a topper!

February 13, 2006

The Rob Thorsen Quartet played to an overflowing crowd thanks partly at least to the fact that Rob's daughter's school class was in attendance. This mini-concert presented by the Athenaeum was, unfortunately, the only jazz concert in the series. With Gilbert Castellanos on trumpet, Mike Wofford on piano, Duncan Moore on drums and Rob on bass, the group performed a variety of everything from jazz standards to World Music. The musicianship in general was exquisite and impeccable.

Starting off with Duke Ellington's "Purple Gazelle," a rarely heard Ellington tune, Castellanos mainly carried the ball. His tone is wonderful especially in the low and middle registers. It's refreshing to hear a trumpeter who's not limited to playing above middle C. Castellanos has studied all the jazz masters like Clifford Brown, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie and it shows in his playing. He's well versed in the styles of the great players who have preceded him. He also has a nice bag of tricks such as squeeze tones and trills which he deploys more or less as the situation arises so that they fit naturally into his solos. A very creative player, his playing is getting more relaxed as he matures. His sense of time is almost too perfect which indicates that he must practice a lot with a metronome. It would be nice to hear him loosen up his time sense in his playing although not in his head. A looser sense of time does not have to be sloppy. And I'm not talking about swinging here. Even swinging eighth notes can be metronomic. Odd placements of accents and rhythmic figures as well as a sense of pulsation can open up the time feel of a solo.

"Jitterbug Waltz" featured a nice duet arrangement between piano and bass. Although Mike Wofford's solos were pretty short throughout in the interests of time(the concert only lasted an hour), Mike is the epitome of impeccability. In addition to that, Mike does another thing that I admire very much in a jazz musician. He's adventurous. When you combine those two qualities in one musician you have something very special indeed. Most musicians usually veer toward one pole or the other, but Mike seems to encompass them both.

"Would you?", a Thorsen original, was based on Dizzy Gillespie's tune "Woody 'N You." Dizzy used to base his tunes on the chord changes of other popular tunes, but it escapes me what "Woody 'N You" is based on. Rob's arrangement based on a Chinese folk tune, "In Xinjiang Time," had a very complex time signature. There were some nice piano and bass vamps providing a background for Duncan Moore's drums. Duncan always sounds good in any context. He's a great section man and can stretch out when given a chance. Not just a "tinky boom" accompanist, as musicians such as Paul Desmond (see sidebar) used to favor, he's always doing something interesting behind the soloist.

Rob Thorsen is a consummate musician. He arranges, he composes, he presents, he promotes. His arrangements feature the bass in unusual and pleasant ways. As a soloist he's fleet of finger and has a bag of "special effects" that tend to liven up any concert. I've heard Rob in a lot of "restrained" settings, such as this one where there were a lot of "young ears" to relate to, but he also can stretch out given the right venue.

Although they didn't have time to finish the concert, Gilbert did a nice version of Thelonious Monk's "Ask Me Now," a very pretty ballad and a nice substitute for the overworked "Body and Soul," proving once again that the melody played straight by a trumpeter with a nice tone is half the battle, something that trumpeters such as Jack Sheldon always do in concert.

Even though there was a standing room only crowd, I can't say the concert was sold out because it was free. All in all a pleasant way to spend the lunch hour. The Athenaeum does a good job providing much of the cultural backbone of music and art in San Diego.

February 08, 2006

Last night the Mike Wofford Trio gave an educational lecture demonstration at the San Diego Museum of Art. This was the first in a planned series where jazz musicians explain the art form and, in addition to playing, tell about what they are doing. I suspect that most musicians would rather just play than talk about their craft. However, Mike on piano along with Luther Hayes on bass and Duncan Moore on drums, did an admirable job talking about different facets of jazz and even taking questions from the audience.

The dilemma they faced is a little like the bricklayer who was asked to give a lecture about the art of bricklaying. Surveying the audience he thought about whether there were any advanced bricklayers present or whether most of them didn't know what mortar was. He thought about whether he should try to encapsulate the whole history of bricklaying, whether he should talk about the various styles and types of brick or whether he should talk about all the great brick buildings of the world. Finally he said, "I just try to lay 'em in a straight line," and sat down.

Mike and the trio offered much more in the way of explanation than that! They worked over the "I Got Rhythm" changes in various styles from simple to complex including a modal version, and gave Duke Ellington's "C Jam Blues" the same treatment with the final very impressive version played free. Questions from the audience brought out the interesting fact that there was, however, some premeditation to the music that sounded totally spontaneous and free. Also that the musicians' time sense was so advanced that they could drop all the basic elements of melody, harmony and rhythm and still stay together as long as everyone still knew where "one" was. And that "one" was not the first beat of each bar but the first beat of the entire form whether 32 bars or a 12 bar blues!

It makes sense that, as long as everyone knows where they are time-wise, the group sounds coherent and cohesive, but, once you lose that time coherence, you just have mass chaos. So time is the most fundamental musical value. However, even if you lose that time coherence, it can be gotten back just by the leader playing a few bars of melody or other reference points so that "one" can be reestablished. It won't be the same "one" as the original "one" but that is a matter only philosophers would fret about.

Mike and the group shared their other musical values with us as well such as tolerance of virtually any style from the Yellowjackets to Cecil Taylor. One got the impression that they had taken them all seriously and learned from all of them. There is a rich and diverse history and many colorful characters to learn from. Fortunately, today there is also a wealth of educational materials available from play-along records in every conceivable style to a voluminous libary of books on improvisation. Also recent technolgy advances in recording have made it possible for every musician to have their own recording studio and produce their own CDs. Musicians need not even record together as a group but instead can email their parts to a central location for the final mix-down and mastering. A lot of them are also marketing their own works on the internet.

Luther explained with a grin that he was the foundation of the band and rightfully so since he plays all the roots of the chords while the piano player plays the "pretty notes." Duncan explained how the bass player and the drummer "lock on" to each other to lay down a cohesive foundation. It would have been nice if they could have elaborated more, but there were time constraints.

It's always a problem in a limited amount of time to give an introductory lecture about jazz. Jazz history goes back over a hundred years now, most of it recorded, so there is a substantial legacy to talk about. One senses that Mike had some anxiety about fitting it all in. He said he didn't want to sound like a lecture for Jazz 101, and this is good because, while anyone could give a Jazz 101 lecture, what I wanted to hear was Mike's personal insight and relationship with jazz. Still I think he tried to cover too much. He could just as well have skipped "I Got Rhythm" and given the whole presentation on the blues which after all is the foundation for both jazz and rock and roll. Undoubtedly, more money has been made off the blues than any other musical form and it all started very simply in a field somewhere probably 200 years ago with an honest expression, a repeat and then the denouement: "Feelin' tomorrow like I feel today. I said feelin' tomorrow like I feel today. I'm gonna pack my things and make my getaway." The 12 bar blues form with 3 four bar sections and 3 chords arose from that or a similar lament and was based on the African- American experience. The development could proceed from Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey down to the harmonic dexterity and adventurousness of Art Tatum and to the chord-change-every-beat blues of Charlie Parker. It all comes from that original holler.

I would venture a guess that most in the audience were fairly sophisticated and knowledgeable jazz aficionados judging by the age group of most of the attendees. Why not ask the audience a few questions like 1) how long have you been listening to jazz?; 2) how many CDs or records in your jazz collection? That way the Museum will have a general idea of where to pitch future programs. For the presenting artist, here are a few tips:

1) Take a facet of jazz and deal with it in depth; don't spread yourself too thin.

3) Give us some insight into the art of improvisation which is what jazz is all about. (They did that also).

4) Help us to understand your motivation and your development as a jazz player and composer.

Finally, it can't be overstated that educational programs such as this are invaluable adjuncts to the concert or listening experience per se. Wynton Marsalis is doing a similar thing weekly on XM radio. Although as Mike emphasized "you can appreciate great music without understanding it technically," still the more the audience and the general public understand what's going on in the minds of the musicians, the more they will appreciate the music. Hopefully, this series will continue.

January 11, 2006

Last night vibist Terry Gibbs performed with the Point Loma Nazarene College Big Band at the San Diego City College Theater. The performance was broadcast live over KSDS, 88.3, and worldwide on the Internet via http://www.jazz88online.org/. Gibbs is in great shape for 81, completely relaxed, enjoying himself immensely and continually cracking jokes. He started by asking the (almost) all female sax section their ages. When they were finished, he said, "Geesh, I'm older than the whole sax section combined!" Gibbs seemed to be in the prime of life not something you usually attribute to an 81 year old.

He joked around with Vince Outlaw, the moderator, who also interviewed him during and after the show. It was neat hearing his comments since they had the ring of truth and authenticity. At 81 Terry Gibbs has nothing to hide. Lucky to have been a young man at the birth of bebop, Gibbs adopted many of its elements into his playing style. Like many musicians his age, he could not believe his ears when he first heard Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. He could understand Gillespie better because of his percussive playing style, but Charlie Parker boggled his mind. "Every solo was a complete musical composition." Parker's genius revolutionized jazz, and it's only slightly easier to fathom when you realize that Parker and Gillespie had been gestating for 5 years during WWII. When they hit the public in 1945, people couldn't believe their ears. The world would never be the same.

Unfortunately, Parker died of 4 major organ failures at the age of 35 in 1955. The general public never appreciated his contribution. Another sad story - trumpet genius Clifford Brown died at the age of 26 in an auto accident that also took the life of pianist Richie Powell, but I digress.

Gibbs was in fine form. If age had diminished his playing power, it wasn't noticeable by me. The Point Loma Nazarene band was stiff by comparison, but after all, they're just babies. Maybe they'll loosen up in another 60 years. Or maybe it's just the hallmark of a great performer to be so loose and unintimidated in front of a worldwide audience. Gibbs did a lot of neat things with the band in a teaching kind of role, and had most if not all of the solo space.

Gibbs noted that he went to Julliard on a tympani scholarship. (Multi-talented, he plays drums as well as piano.) After slugging a professor, Gibbs became not a college drop-out but a kick-out. Of course with natural talent like his, who needs a college degree? He's an example of my thesis that natural talent will always trump degreed talent. In fact most musicians are born and not made. Musical talent seems to run in families and is, therefore, genetic. Another digression: I was taking an ear training class from Hal Crook. My girlfriend at the time who had perfect pitch and had never attended a class came with me just to take the final exam for a lark. We were on our way someplace. Her father had been a violinist and conductor so the genes were in the family. While the rest of us agonized, she scored a perfect score and walked out in a few minutes. Now that's natural talent and inherited talent! Of course there are many different kinds of natural talent other than musical. My thesis: one should follow their talent and interests and forget about college degrees.

In summary, now that I've totally digressed away from Terry Gibbs' performance, Terry did a lot more than play the vibes. He gave us little insights into an amazing and fortunate life; he taught; he shared his wisdom. What more could you want? And as he kept reminding us, his CDs were in the lobby! He can be found on the web at http://www.terrygibbs.com/